Subir Roy: For the Railways, it is business as usual, including accidents

Congress and BJP manifestos have promised high-speed rail network but what about safety?

This year, well over 20 people have died in three train accidents caused by derailment. At the turn of the year, more than 30 people died in two accidents in which trains caught fire. There should be a sense of crisis in the Railways and it should have put itself in an emergency mode, declaring: let us stop everything else and come together to make train travel much safer. However, for the Railways, it is business as usual, with serious accidents par for the course.

This is not surprising; there seems to be serious malfunctioning at the top. According to two sources, the railway board, which runs the organisation, barely functions. The chairman has difficulty holding board meetings because he cannot ensure the attendance of many members. It seems his writ barely runs, and the scourge of departmentalism is raging.

In order to find solutions to a problem, you first need basic information. The Indian Railways' website has statistics about accidents up to 2011-12. You need to trawl the Internet to know about what has happened thereafter. An enquiry to determine the cause of an accident can take time, but the basic tally of accidents and the number of casualties should be available almost in real time, and should be updated when, say, an injured person gives up the fight.

Statistics till 2011-12 actually paint a partially positive picture. The accident rate (train accidents per million train kilometres) has steadily fallen from 0.21 in 2007-08 to 0.12 in 2011-12, but the casualty rate (per million passengers) has remained static at 0.01. The number of accidents has gone down over the same period from 193 to 131, but the number of casualties (death plus injuries) has gone up from 254 to 686. In 2007-08 nine people died in train accidents; in 2010-11 this number was 100. This means fewer accidents but more serious ones, involving human lives.

The actual picture thereafter will be known when official numbers become available. But is it possible that the Railways is in secular decline in this decade? The golden age for the Railways was under the stewardship of Lalu Prasad (2004-09). Then came three years of destructive Trinamool Congress rule. Next, Pawan Bansal made an ignominious corruption-related exit and the present minister got in knowing he had less than a year. During this period, the Railways' financial health declined sharply.

There is a link between the right kind of leadership, financial health and safety. If the huge 1.4 million-plus railway workforce is not motivated and driven, then you will get laxity, callousness and worse. There are dark rumours that the toll in the recent fire accidents was high because the flame retardant material used to make the coaches in the Perambur factory was, in fact, not effective. Clearly, corruption can cost lives.

Derailments indicate that timely replacement of aged tracks, rolling stock and signalling equipment is not taking place. In order to address this, the Special Railway Safety Fund of Rs 17,000 crore (Rs 12,000 crore from the finance ministry and Rs 5,000 crore from a passenger fare surcharge) was set up in 2001 to wipe out arrears in tracks (45 per cent), bridges (10 per cent), rolling stock (19 per cent) and signalling gear (seven per cent). The job was done in eight years and the idea was that arrears would not be allowed to be piled up. In the last two years, there has been talk of setting up a second safety fund to wipe out the arrears accumulated again, this time at a cost of Rs 40,000 crore.

The Kakodkar committee's report on railway safety has both identified the causes of accidents and outlined a road map to set things right. In the 2006-11 period, staff were responsible for 42 per cent of accidents, equipment failure three per cent, and sabotage seven per cent. The Railways was not responsible for 43 per cent of the accidents. The single biggest cause of casualties was accidents at level crossings. The committee has recommended spending Rs 1 lakh crore on safety-related investment over five years. This can come at Rs 20,000 crore a year from passenger safety cess (Rs 5,000 crore), matching government grant (Rs 5,000 crore), deferred dividend against social burden (Rs 5,000 crore), road cess (Rs 1,000 crore) and income from railway land development (Rs 4,000 crore).

Both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) manifestos promise a high-speed rail network - which is glamorous but requires a very strict safety culture. The BJP gives priority to safety through an investment in long-required overhaul of stressed infrastructure and manning all level crossings. The Congress says it is committed to the modernisation outlined by the Sam Pitroda committee's report and completing the dedicated freight corridors on time. What a manifesto cannot do is promise to put a capable minister in charge.

subirkroy@gmail.com