More Money in the Name of Rail Safety Fund Won’t Avert Derailments

Allocation of more money in the name of Railway Safety Fund will not necessarily keep a check on derailments.

Will a safety fund a stop future railway accidents? (Photo: Rhythum Seth/ The Quint)

At last, the much needed Railway Safety Fund has been created. It has been a crying need since Anil Kakodkar recommended this in 2012. Too many derailments are taking place of late. There were at least 70 derailments in 2016. Two or three dying do not merit attention as the railways themselves have categorised that if only ten or more die, it is major accident calling for a condolence message from the minister. Goods train derailment is hardly ever reported.

Derailment of a train is more common than what the newspaper readers know since only major accidents are reported, like 150 dying in Pokhryan near Kanpur and 42 dying in Hirakund Express derailment near Kuneru. Local editions of major newspapers carry a paragraph or two of other derailments which will not be seen by the readers of other editions.

Blaming Sabotage for Derailment

Derailment is derailment even if passengers luckily escape death. Because it shows the wheels are not good enough or there is some other mechanical failure. Have you noticed whenever the Railways cry sabotage due to missing fishplates, they never publish the photograph of damaged rails. The sabotage angle can be thrown in and by the time the enquiry is over, you forget which accident the report is talking about.

In the recent Kanpur accident, on 20 November, the Railways immediately blamed the fractured rail without showing the photograph. I had said earlier, it had to be the wheels because strange noises have been heard three hours ahead,12 hours ahead and the train was stopped and inspected three hours earlier. A fractured rail does not make noise three and 12 hours ahead. Sabotage was also suspected. On 28 January, a Railway Safety Commission official ruled out sabotage and also fog and fixed it on over-aged wheels.

Safety Fund May Be Misused

To implement Anil Kakodkar’s recommendations, the Finance Minister has been liberal enough to provide Rs 1 lakh crore for the Safety Fund. Just like the Safety Fund, created by Nitish Kumar, this will also be misused. They will spend it on laying new lines and gauge conversion (everything should come under capital expenditure ) and hardly 30 percent is spent on signal improvement and maintenance and technology adoption, like remote checking the rails and wheels.

Much more shocking is the fact that the Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the action taken on its recommendations says (SCR 188 2013-14) that only less than 40 percent of the money allotted for safety had been utilised by the Railways in the last two years!

Suresh Prabhu often talks of transparency. He has an onerous job of utilising this fund for the purpose created. One can hope that a number of old bridges, old tracks, signalling system and other safety enhancement devices will be replaced with this Safety Fund.

‘Smart’ Ideas by Lazy Babus

If you read the previous ten Railway Budgets, you can find references to projects like anti-collision device, advance warning system, satellite-based global positioning system, train collision avoidance system, etc.

How many of these projects saw the light of the day? You will notice that they all perform more or less the same functions. Then why bother with different names ?

That shows the smartness of the babus of the railways!

More Money Won’t Increase Safety

It is not true that more money means more safety. Most of the accidents have been caused by human errors and this is the result of poor training and wrong recruitment policies. With no change in these, merely pumping more money will not make travel by trains safer.

For years, the suggestions that every coach must have a fire extinguisher, engines must have fog lights and they must have helicopters in every zonal or even divisional HQs for quick relief during accidents, have fallen on deaf ears.

The Railways’ responsibility to transport the passengers safely is now only moral. It must be made legal. ‘Canadian Railway Safety Management System Regulations’ that has provisions for whistleblowing and ‘Safe and Accountable Rail Act’ that ensure accountability are worthy of emulation.

Railways require Rs 1.82 lakh crore to execute the already sanctioned projects and Rs 5 lakh crore to implement the recommendations of Sam Pitroda’s committee on modernisation. Where is all this money going to come from?

Ensure Autonomy of Railway Safety Commission

The Railway Safety Commission should be truly made independent by appointing engineers from outside the Railways. Although for namesake, this Safety Commission is attached to the Civil Aviation Ministry, it is manned by deputationists.

It is high time this monolithic structure was broken down and the Railways is converted into a PSU. It should have technocrats, industrialists, financial analysts from outside unlike only its employee-members. It’s the self-serving, corrupt bureaucracy as the in-built danger currently ailing the Railways.

(The writer is Secretary, Consumer Protection Council, Tamil Nadu)

Also Read: Highest Allocation And Other Benefits For Railways in Budget 2017