Blood on the tracks

A big bang in Delhi is always more newsworthy than an even bigger one somewhere else. That is perhaps why the three Delhi blasts of October 29, which killed 59 people, received much more attention than the horrendous train accident in Andhra Pradesh, which killed 102. In fact, in terms of fatalities, the Indian railways are bigger killers than the Laskhar-e-Tayebba. Over 500 people die each year because of train accidents and the number has been growing. Indeed, if the railways changed their self-serving definition of an accident, the number of accidents would soar. The current definition is linked to their legal liability. So where they are not liable, they do not count it as an accident. There is therefore an in-built downward bias. Perhaps that is why the government seems unbothered. It makes some pro forma noises when people die, announces some compensation, transfers some lowly officials and waits for the next one to happen. Railway officials are blase too, and feel no sense of direct responsibility. They appear to have cocooned themselves in a psychological protective shell that allows them to carry on with their day-to-day responsibilities in much the same way as doctors do.

Officials can counter all this and point to the statistics to argue that the railways' safety record has in fact been improving. That may well be the case, but these numbers get distorted by a single large incident. In any case, there are far too many unmanned level crossings, and not enough safety provisions in the signalling system, which needs heavy investment in modernisation. There has also traditionally been a delay in upgrading track.

These point to the many reasons why rail accidents take place""increased traffic, worn-out rolling stock, archaic signalling systems, weak rails, drunken drivers, poorly trained staff, negligence, acts of God like the boulder that fell across the track on the Konkan railway, heavy rains that wash away tracks and culverts ... the list is endless simply because every accident will have a specific cause. But that does not mean that we stop looking for the general causative factors. And much as it might to hide behind specificities, the fact is that it is the government, as the owner of the railways, that is responsible. Not just the rail minister, but the entire government, and that must include prime ministers, who like to take credit for national achievements but run for cover when it comes to specific failures behind which could lie general causes.

Manmohan Singh is not an exception. Indeed, instead of stopping with congratulating Lalu Prasad on doing a splendid job by carrying so much more freight, he could also have asked how this has become possible when there have been no dramatic additions to traffic capacity and no noticeable improvement in productivity. The answer is a well-kept secret and deniable as well: like the much-maligned truckers, the railways have been overloading their wagons with the minister's permission but without the engineering department's approval. This has been weakening the tracks. So be prepared for more accidents.