Every time Laxman Singhal, a trader from Indore, boards a train, he spends considerable time in front of various gods at home, praying that he reaches safe and sound, perhaps even just alive. Singhal travels to Delhi twice a week to buy his ware, has lost two close relatives in train accidents in five years, and is his family's sole bread-earner.
And Singhal is angry and hurt that despite the loss of countless lives in several accidents over the years,easily avoidable disasters caused by silly human mistakes,the government and the Indian Railways are apathetic towards the safety of ordinary passengers, for many of whom travelling earns the bread.
Are the Railways really an unsafe proposition? It is, sadly, but the blame cannot all be laid at its door. The dilemma is worsened by the fact that there's no alternative.
The Railways is the biggest public sector undertaking in the country and has the second largest network in the world, and probably the most complex. The scale of operations and the sheer size of activity is unbelievable: Over 12,000 trains carrying 11 million passengers and one million tonnes of freight everyday. Between 50,000 and 75,000 reservations are made every day in New Delhi alone (see table).
But no statistics can justify the extent of inefficiency and sloppiness that has crept into this behemoth which is today a den of corruption and an easy tool for successive politicians tinkering with the vast rail network acting as the spine of the country. With scant attention paid to the actual running of the system, disasters have become common,20 in the past two decades and 5 major ones in '98 alone. Needless to say, all these accidents were followed by inquiry committees whose reports, if submitted at all, were never made public and rarely any action taken upon the findings.
And why not? Safety is a dirty word for the authorities. Says former additional member, (traffic & safety) Railway Board, S.P. Singha: The management never discusses safety as a problem, a management issue or even as a subject when there is no accident. All discussions begin only after a major mishap and one starts looking to assign responsibility. That's the heart of the problem. And when the skill, education and efficiency of the workforce is less than adequate to tackle the dimension of activity involved, disasters are totally predictable.
The semi-skilled and unskilled labourers work under sub-human conditions. Says former Board member N. Venkatesan: Very little attention is paid to improving workers' conditions. The drivers and other train and station staff work under pitiable conditions in which human error is not surprising. Even in Barh station, 90 km off Patna in Bihar, the state which has sent the most rail ministers to the Centre, switchmen have to walk half a kilometre for basic needs like drinking water and toilet.
There's more: the safety buck doesn't stop within the railways. The commissioner, safety, in the Railways is virtually on deputation from the ministry of surface transport or the ministry of tourism. Safety is primarily a departmental concern in the organisation and the responsibility for any catastrophe is fixed accordingly. Explains Singha: The safety commissioners and member, traffic, who are responsible for safety, have no power and merely have a post-incident investigation or coordination role rather than that to prevent disasters.
In this scenario, is it any surprise that little or no effort is made in the annual budgets to improve the operations or safety standards. The most important area in operational safety, the root of all disasters,signalling,receives no priority. Till last year, the government earmarked only about 1.5-1.8 per cent of the budget funds towards signalling, increased this year by railway minister Nitish Kumar to 2.5 per cent. The world average is 8-10 per cent.
Similar step-motherly treatment is meted out to track renewal, the other crucial area for railway safety. According to railway statistics, 25 per cent of tracks can be classified as unfit for use, but since they are part of major routes, continue to take major traffic load. At the start of the Eighth Plan ('92-97), about 9,595 km of track were pending repair or replacement. This figure has since increased to 10,957 kms in '98. This has led to speed restrictions, late trains, disruption of schedule, and, of course, accidents.
A major accident point for the Railways is unmanned level crossings. Of the 40,517 crossings, 24,359, or a good 60 per cent, are unmanned and the sole responsibility of any mishap lies with the road user. For the railways, they are simply tresspassers.
And repeatedly, the budget has paid less attention to maintenance of existing assets and more to new services,loading on new trains to an already overused network and raising the number of halts,without improving the infrastructure. Says Venkatesan: The annual budget is just an exercise of introducing new trains and explaining the progress of projects in politicians' constituencies. And what can the minister do? Before every budget, he receives requests (even veiled threats) from MPs to start scores of new trains. The demands vary from 90 superfast trains to about 600 more stops on existing routes or extension of an estimated 200 trains.
In the last three years alone, about 40 new trains have been introduced and 200 stops added to existing services, without any expansion of rolling stock (number of coaches) and tracks. And this eats up bulk of the budgeted funds: each new train costs the railways about Rs 40 crore with additional running cost of Rs 220-260 per km. Each two-minute stop adds Rs 10 lakh to the running cost of the train annually, with heavy fuel consumption in acceleration and deceleration, and of course, major loss of time.
A recent study by the Railways reveals that few, often only one, passengers boarded the train at most of the new stops added during the past decade. The Delhi-Chennai Grand Trunk Express when introduced, had 14 stops and took 29 hours between terminal stations. Now, it stops at 41 stations and takes 35 hours for the same distance. It's the same story with most express trains; trains which started with 1-20 stops now have as many as 100-110.
But why has the government been only a passive observer to the steady deterioration of the railways? Especially since it contributes a hefty amount to the central exchequer in dividends,Rs 1,490 crore in '97-98, to be precise. The answer is known for some time now: lack of money. Budgetary support is on the decline, internal generations have dwindled, and external borrowings have been restricted by high cost of credit. The white paper presented last year in Parliament by Kumar says: Most of the problems before the Railways today,incomplete projects, delay in implementation, and lack of technological and infrastructure upgrading and expansion,are due to lack of finance. Support from the exchequer is dwindling each year and borrowing through the Indian Railways Finance Corporation has become very costly. Internal fund generation is affected as growth of freight traffic, the main source of revenue, has declined due to high cost (of railway travel) and diversion to roads.
For many years, political pressure and socialist ideological baggage have worked to keep most passenger fares at low, uneconomical levels and a drastic hike can be safely ruled out. In '97-98, the amount of subsidy on this account came to over Rs 2,800 crore. Input costs have increased 16 times in the last four decades but passenger fares have increased only 7 times. Even the freight rates have increased by only 10 times in this period. This excruciating burden has been worsened by the Fifth Pay panel recommendations last year,the Railways, after all, provide a livelihoold to 1.6 million people.
Says Venkatesan: The Railways' social burden is Rs 1,800 crore ,Rs 400 crore in suburban services and Rs 1,400 crore in passenger fare subsidy. The government roughly gives Rs 2,000 crore as budgetary support which can somewhat compensate for the social losses and internal generations should be able to help it run as a commercial entity. But in an organisation where 60-65 per cent of the earnings are used up in salaries and wages, internal generations can assume mythical proportions.
Officially, however, a lot of new technology is being introduced for eliminating error. This includes track circuiting to prevent usage of the same track by two trains, axle counting system which keeps track of a train's movement and auxiliary warning system which acts as a watchdog on drivers for errors. Still, there's no long-term strategy for railway safety as a whole. In the absence of which disasters will continue to happen. And the Singhals of this country will travel with their heart tightly clutched in their fists.
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