Off track on rail safety

Some suggestions made in the interim report by the panel headed by NITI Aayog member Bibek Debroy to make the Railways an efficient resource-generating machine, merit serious consideration. These include reorganising and restructuring the Railway Board, separating policymaking from operations, transferring power to regional heads and rationalising zones and divisions. The Centre’s emphasis on railways, given its energy efficiency and speed, is in line with a broader need to promote it, over road transport, as the prime mover of materials and people. If the railways lost out to roads, it is due to dilapidated infrastructure. This Rail Budget has rightly set aside ₹8.5 lakh crore to be spent over five years to bolster investment in track, wagon capacity, equipment and safety. To this end, the Railways must enjoy the requisite autonomy (which calls for an independent regulator) to raise resources, without being arm-twisted by political forces to subsidise passenger fares at the expense of freight. However, while trying to make the Railways modern and efficient, the Centre must take a closer look at the interface between infrastructure, human resources and safety.

While the number of serious accidents has fallen from 351 in 2002-03 to over a 100 now, those killed and injured have risen, pointing to an increase in their severity. Modernisation has brought down the number of accidents, but over 100 a year is still too high. Derailments and collisions still account for 40 per cent of all major accidents, and in 70 per cent of these cases the railway staff has been found responsible. Deploying technology to reduce human error to a minimum is necessary but not sufficient. The Anil Kakodkar Committee has urged the use of devices such as track circuiting (a system that indicates whether a train is on a track or not) and automatic signalling, while pointing out that it is equally crucial to train staff to handle them. The report also says that over a lakh posts meant for safety-related functions lie vacant, which underscores the distinction between downsizing and rightsizing. Even if modernisation has rendered some of these posts redundant, it does not explain, for instance, why over 16,000 loco pilot posts have not been filled.

The DP Tripathi Report submitted in 2013 calls for an improvement in the working conditions of the loco pilot, who often does more than the stipulated number of night runs and is not given enough time or facilities to rest. Manning mail/express and high-speed trains with limited halts, calls for a high level of mental alertness, with signals to be observed frequently from a cramped, overheated cabin. The Railways needs state-of-the-art technology to move ahead. But it also needs a human resource initiative. The Debroy panel should look into this aspect.

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