Focusing on Railway safety

HEADS HAVE STARTED rolling in the Northern Railway as the Minister, Ms. Mamata Banerjee, has chosen to takes on the Railway Board and its administration for the accident last Friday at Jeonpura, in Punjab, which claimed over 40 lives. She too offered to resign, owning moral responsibility. Instead of wasting more time, Ms. Banerjee should step up her drive and focus on railway safety and security. Unfortunately, the latest tragedy was a virtual repeat of the Khanna disaster in the same Ambala-Ludhiana section just two years ago. No one doubts Ms. Banerjee's capabilities and she very much wanted to be the Railway Minister. Now that she has another chance to set things right in the Railways, she must pay more attention to Rail Bhavan even in the midst of her preoccupation with the approaching Assembly elections in West Bengal. Unless she follows up on her orders and makes the senior officials accountable for their actions, the Minister cannot deliver on her promises. Even while taking on the errant or corrupt officials, she cannot achieve much without the cooperation of the Board and the administration. There have been enough probes and safety commissions, whose reports and recommendations are gathering dust in the Ministry.

Fortunately for the Railways, the drivers of both the Amritsar- bound Howrah Mail and the goods train (whose bogies derailed and fell on the `up' line) are alive to provide a clear blow-by-blow account. The Howrah Mail driver is reported to have asked his counterpart why there were only four wagons in the goods train - which means the walkie-talkies were functional. And yet, he could not avoid hurtling into the derailed wagons which were lying on his track. The Railway authorities are citing the time factor to argue that this mishap could not have been averted. It was too late by the time the goods train driver realised that 11 wagons had `decoupled'. He switched on the flasher lights, but did not sound an emergency over the communication network. The Railway administration might list the cause of this accident under the category of `human errors'. But there is more to it. The condition and quality of the tracks and the reason for the decoupling of the wagons of the goods train have to be probed. Most important, the inquiry must find out how much of track renewal has been done in this section after the 1998 Khanna accident.

Apart from the statutory inquiry by the Commissioner of Railways Safety, Ms. Banerjee wants a judicial inquiry by a sitting judge of the Supreme Court to get at the whole truth. The Minister must realise that the promised probe into the Khanna disaster, on this very section in the Ambala division, has not been completed even after two years. The problems in railway safety are well known. Rail fractures have been the main cause of derailments and are in turn due to the condition of the track. This was evident even in the Khanna tragedy in 1998. Because of the density of the traffic and the limited funds made available for track renewals, this aspect of maintenance has not received the kind of support required. At the beginning of the Ninth Plan, the arrears in track renewals had risen to nearly 11,000 km. Experts have also pointed to the quality of the rails supplied and the urgent need to improve the quality of the steel (provided by the public sector SAIL) to meet the prescribed specification. Similarly, many wagons and coaches which are considered ``unfit'' for use on the rails continue to be in service. Of course, railway safety calls for massive investment - Rs. 15,000 crores according to one estimate. What the Railway Minister should do is to prioritise the spending and take up track renewals, wagon/coach replacement and modification of signal circuitry on top of the agenda.

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