The Railways’ move to connect with grassroots through an internal portal is good and can be tried with a special focus to sieve out the best and constructive ideas, say former railway officials.

They hope that the process has inbuilt systems to manage the voluminous data that could emerge and safeguard against the menace of imposters.

“The move is good as all 1.3 million employees can reach the Chairman of the Railway Board. In the Railways, all officials are expected to take care of safety. It can be tried to find the net effect,” SS Khurana, former Railway Board Chairman, told BusinessLine .

Reaching grassroots

“On the positive side it will bring out the concealed weak points in the area of safety — be it operations or infrastructure including rolling stock. Employees may not be aware of the permitted safety tolerances and may raise false alarms,” SS Khurana, added.

“Suitable care will have to be built in to identify that the reporting staff are not imposters,” Khurana added

Reaching out to the grassroots will also mean that there will be lots of ideas, and a huge volume of information will be generated. “How to separate the right information from those that are not of high priority will have to be seen,” he said. “The Chief Safety Officers or the safety departments do not have a large number of supporting staff. They usually raise concerns and flag them to respective departments. All these departments have their routine work, and this may mean additional work for those departments,” said Khurana, who has also been a former Member-Staff on the Railway Board.

Welcoming the proposal, Vivek Sahai, another former Railway Board Chairman, said, “The portal should be used only for constructive ideas to improve rail safety.” Other concerns from officials declining to be quoted was regarding the possible use of system to settle personal scores.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW