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Two train accidents in a week should make Suresh Prabhu hang his head in shame

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Angshukanta Chakraborty
Angshukanta ChakrabortyAug 23, 2017 | 17:46

Two train accidents in a week should make Suresh Prabhu hang his head in shame

The Union minister for railways, Suresh Prabhu, has tweeted.

In the aftermath of two train accidents in a week – Kalinga-Utkal Express on August 20 and Kaifiyat Express on August 23 – the rail ministry has kindly deigned to “take full moral responsibility”, even as PM Narendra Modi “has asked him to wait”. This, while train accidents and crumbling infrastructure have made travelling by train a high-risk venture all by itself.

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Kaifiyat Express derailed this morning, injuring over 70, and even though no fatalities have been reported, it seems a train ticket is one to sure-shot self-harm in India 2017. The train supposedly hit a dumper and nine coaches derailed as a result in the Auraiya region of UP. The sand loader overturned on a road parallel to the track in Achhalda area of Auraiya district around 2.45am, according to the Indian Express.

While NDRF (National Disaster Response Force) team has been despatched and rescue operations are ongoing, injured shifted to hospitals, etc, neither is there an air of general horror in the ruling regime at its repeated failures to revamp Indian Railways, nor is there any true sense of moral culpability, despite the minister tweeting so.

Even in this utter tragedy, the minister prefers singing paeans to PM’s “New India” – the latest catchphrase that has replaced the "achche din" war cry of 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Under this government, while the basic infrastructure keeps rotting under utter and absolute incompetence, the surround sound of “bullet trains”, high-speed rails, etc, keep the narrative firmly under the regime’s control.

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Kalinga-Utkal Express killed about 20, injuring many more. But the figures actually tell a story of terrifying administrative failure. An IndiaSpend report lists out the number of train accident fatalities from 2014-17, under Prabhu’s stewardship and that comes to a staggering 193, in just three years, with 70 per cent due to derailment.

According to the report, “India’s death toll from train derailments in 2016-17 is now the highest it has been in a decade”, and this figure has been arrived at analysing data tabled in Rajya Sabha on March 31, 2017. Evidently even this data is dated, and the number of casualties has only gone up.

The report says: “The toll of 193 dead comes during a year that reported the fewest train accidents over 10 years, ending March 2017”.

DailyO columnist Arup Chatterjee writes of the huge cost of train accidents, not only on people’s lives, but also on the economy itself. Chatterjee cals this the “pizza over passenger security” syndrome.

“A spectre is haunting the Indian Railways - the spectre of elite aspirations. After assuming office in 2015, Prabhu introduced pizza-on-demand and regional food services on select routes. This was then welcomed as a disruption in the erstwhile tradition of lacklustre railway services. Passengers today are quick to condemn the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), for instance, without quite understanding its economics.”

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There have been 350 rail accidents under the tenure of Suresh Prabhu, in the last three years. However, the political leadership is more interested in changing names of historic stations such as Mughal Sarai, than ensure the tracks are safe, the security briefs are in place, procedures have been adhered to. The “inadequate performance” of the Indian Railways has seen commensurate blame game from the leadership, the ticket prices sky-rocketing, while no benefits really trickling down to the ordinary passengers.

Chatterjee writes: “Two of the three recommendations of the Debroy Committee - which would have been instrumental in operationalising the Kakodkar Committee recommendations in the first place - have bitten the dust. Instead, the Indian Railways has diverted its attention to promoting luxury transport in the form of Tejas and Humsafar Express, new militarily strategic railway networks such as the Bilaspur-Leh railways, and the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Railway Network. Arguably, it is to suit the sociocultural and political sensibility of upper-middle-class Indians, who would rather travel in comforts, than give up on their subsidy.”

There is a crisis of leadership and India’s systemic failure in each and every department is actually symptomatic of a deeper malaise. Why is it that the fourth largest railway network has to suffer such ignominy under such inept leaders, who tweet more and hardly produce any results?

The crisis within Indian Railways – not just in the number of fatalities shooting up and doubling in the past three years under Prabhu’s ministership – but also in the way we approach this national asset, is a story of India’s misplaced priorities. When the regime is more concerned about image management than doing its work and delivering governance, the bubble has to burst some time or another.

Also read: India’s train tragedies are derailing lives, economics and common sense

Last updated: August 23, 2017 | 17:46
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