Many sensible recommendations have been made by the high-level safety review committee set up recently in the wake of several accidents on Indian Railways. The report says that if the committee were to make only one recommendation, it would be to monitor and implement what is already known — but has been languishing at various stages of consideration or execution. It then goes on to add that the most serious deficiency of the Railways is inordinate delay in execution or insufficient funding. The latter can only, of course, get worse, as the wages of populism now have to be paid: for the first time in decades, the Railways is expected to lose money this year.
Even so, the committee says Rs 1.03 lakh crore is needed to upgrade the Railway’s safety. Usefully, a funding mechanism has been suggested — Rs 5,000 crore should come from a safety cess on passengers, and the central government should make a matching grant; Rs 5,000 crore should come from deferred dividend payments, as the railways spent three times that amount annually on its “social obligations”; Rs 4,000 crore from earnings from railway land; and Rs 1,000 crore from the road cess. Thus, the entire safety budget can be funded in five or six years — which is as much time it will take to put new systems in place to get the work done. Half the cost, Rs 50,000 crore, is to get rid of all, yes all, level crossings — since they account for as much as 48 per cent of casualties in accidents. This will partly pay for itself, as eliminating level crossings will save the organisation Rs 7,000 core every year.
But, as the committee is well aware, it is people and organisational structure that matter the most at the end of the day. It says bluntly, and with great disapproval, that the Railway Board is policy framer, operator and regulator, all rolled into one. The commissioner for Railway safety has very limited scope for independent action as its autonomy is “elusive”. The board can, and does, override it. The committee underlines the need for an independent statutory Railway Safety Authority and to decentralise more executive powers.
