A week after the monumental disaster of the three-way collision of trains in Odisha, the dust has finally settled down and life is back to normal for both Indian Railways and the nation.
But many questions remain unanswered. First, below are four unaddressed issues emanating from the accident.
THE NUMBER MISMATCH
First, ‘the final number’ in the accident in which 24 coaches of two super-fast trains (travelling at 128 kmph and 126 kmph speed) derail and collide with many coaches capsizing, it is difficult — if not impossible — to count the number of passengers impacted by the accident. The counting is a humungous task because no one truly knows how many passengers were in the unreserved compartments or how many unreserved passengers had boarded the reserved sleeper coaches.
Nonetheless, the best approximation of dead is derived from numbers provided by different wings of governments. Indian Railways (IR) has upped its casualty count to 278 from 275 while the Odisha government has revised the official death count from 288 to 275 and back to 288. The numbers reported by a few international agencies are around 300, if not more. Despite the fact that many passengers are presumably missing, the number of dead remains unaltered for the past four days.
Having analysed in past many railway accidents (including having handled firsthand one of the worst rail fire accidents in 1990 in Patna), I humbly posit, even the highest of three numbers (278, 288 and 300) eventually might turn out to be the under-count, mostly because of the impossibility of correct matching of casualty in the unreserved coaches.
CHINK IN THE ARMOUR: THE DISSENT NOTE
On June 3, within 24 hours after the accident, IR hit upon the jackpot i.e., ‘the root cause of the accident’ — the signal. And the sequence of events was that the first green signal for the main line to Coromandel Express was consequently withdrawn.
The signal failure was ruled out and the driver of the Coromandel Express was given a clean chit. And the above was done without waiting for the report of CCRS.
IR has put a strong needle of suspicion on the “interference” resulting in the ‘change in electronic circuit and points.’ With this, all roads lead to the “possible sabotage”, a theory enunciated first in the handwritten signed preliminary report dated June 3 of five senior section engineers in the railway board press conference.
The consensual final picture that has emerged is that Coromandel Express entered the loop line. Its locomotive and 21 coaches derailed and hit the stationary goods train standing in the loop line and the mayhem was unleashed. A side twist to the story was three coaches of the Bengaluru-Howrah superfast express train derailing and colliding with the Coromandel Express.
The interference theory and resultant change of the electronic circuit and point theory suggesting “possible sabotage” had barely hit home that a counter-narrative surfaced on June 6. This was a handwritten signed dissent note dated June 3 (same date as the preliminary report) from A K Mahanta SSE Signalling, who was one of five signatories of the preliminary report.
Mahanta’s report titled ‘Dissent note regarding joint finding report on derailment at BNBR yard on 02.06.2023’, emphasizes-
One, he disagreed with point 4 of the preliminary report which says, “point no. 17 A was found set for up loop line (in reverse condition) of BNBR station at km no 255/13-15.” His dissent presumably was based on the observation from the data logger as per which point 17 was set for normal main line. It may be reversed after the derailment.
Two, the dissent note adds further, “The point of the derailment is before the LC (level crossing) gate 94 that is before point 17 A.”
The dissent notes presumably based on observation from the data logger (the black box of train operation) make clear that point 17 was set for mainline (all clear without obstruction) for the Coromandel Express to forge ahead and the train running at @128 kmph derailed well before reaching switch or point 17A (responsible for the train changing direction). If the observation from the dissent note is the correct version, then Coromandel Express derailed on the main line and not the loop line. It throws the current theory of interference in disarray, suggesting that the overzealous railway board, in the name of “interference or sabotage”, might have jumped the gun.
OVER TO CBI
Three, the layman in me is unable to put a handle on truth with competing clauses doing the rounds. And the railwayman in me would have waited for at least the preliminary report of CCRS to jump to the root cause of the accident and the exact sequence of events leading to the accident.
Alas! It was not to be.
The Central government with the concurrence of the state government has handed over the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). And as such, interference, collusion, foul play, sabotage or a combination of some or all is the buzzword now.
I am unsure what caused the accident — human error, machine failure, collusion, foul play or sabotage. However, the complexity, severity and uniqueness of the accident is so baffling that I cannot rule out any cause at this stage including that of sabotage. I wish the Railway Board acting on the recommendation of the High-Level Committee on Rail Safety (2012) headed by scientist Dr Anil Kakodkar, had set up Railway Safety Authority (RSA) — an empowered, independent and statutory safety regulator duly backed up by professional inputs from within and outside at multiple levels.
A decade has gone by, but the Railway Board has not acted, and its safety architecture remains the same as it was in 1940 — a reactive setup. And despite its limitations, I would have still preferred a comprehensive statutory inquiry by CCRS. Because with all my trust in the capability of CBI to investigate the complicity, collusion and criminality, I am not sure it will be able to nail down and get exemplary punishment to the wrongdoers in a time-bound manner, given its track record of investigating 2010 Sainthia rail accident (60 dead) and Gnaneshwari Express accident (148 dead) where the next of kin of dead, Indian Railways and the country is yet to get closure.
Nonetheless, it is now over to the CBI and all I want is an independent, swift and transparent investigation. CBI moved fast, filed FIR and commenced the investigation. The FIR is filed under Sections 337 (causing hurt to any person by doing any act so rashly or negligently as to endanger human life), 338 (causing grievous hurt by an act endangering life or personal safety of others), 304 A (causing death by negligence), and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of Indian Penal Code (IPC). The associated Railways Act provisions have also been invoked.
I have no competency in jurisprudence and have full faith in CBI’s credibility, competency and capability to nail culprits, but sections of the FIR do not give me comfort as the maximum punishment under sections is six months (section 337) to two years (sections 338 and 304A).
The only solace I find is the recourse to Section 34 of IPC, a general provision that can be applied where it is difficult to determine the precise degree of responsibility and involvement of parties/persons in a joint criminal act, where it is challenging to establish individual liability for actions taken in support of all parties involved in a common aim. Section 34 aids in determining individual accountability in a joint criminal act.
So, it is now over to the CBI to nail the truth, book culprits and get them punished in the shortest possible time. But knowing India’s jurisprudence, it will take ages before the process is completed and before that, there will be another accident, another tragedy and another set of causes to be found out.
My nostrum of this metastasized cancer is the authorities to be heeding the recommendations of the Kakodkar Committee to set up the Rail Safety Authority (RSA), given the commitment of the government to fast-track railway infrastructure growth and its declared goal of running as many semi-high-speed trains on the existing tracks.
THE KIN
Four, the greatest management thinker Peter F. Drucker once said famously- “There is nothing as difficult and as expensive, but also nothing as futile, as trying to keep a corpse from stinking.”
This accident is turning out to be a Q.E.D. moment for Drucker.
Here are the supposedly final numbers — 288 dead. A week after, out of 288, 95 were handed over to the next-of-kin post identification. Also, 193 more bodies reached Bhubaneshwar (mainly AIIMS) morgues where 111 were identified and either handed over or in the process of completion of medicolegal formalities. As I understand, 80-plus bodies remain unidentified. And with the decomposition of bodies having set in, identification would be impossible amid the sad war for corpses that has begun with one body having four or more claimants.
And the reason is?
Most of the dead with 20 lakhs on their head are richer in death than they were in life. It cannot get better with Rs 12 lakh ex gratia from Railways, Rs 5 lakh from the state government, Rs 2 lakh from the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund and state governments promising jobs to next of kin.
Unsurprisingly, then there is a “war for the corpse” with bodies wrongly identified and/or handed to the wrong person. There are mismatches between bodies and photographs. And there are cases of multiple claimants for a single body, or even bodies handed over before the arrival of the rightful claimant. With or without a DNA test, I am reminded of the battle of corpses in the 1990 Patna fire accident, where despite my best efforts, at least two of the unidentifiable corpses were forcibly seized by gun-carrying Bahubalis claiming to be their own.
Time is flying fast for the dead of Balasore and I fear a similar battle of corpses for unidentified bodies which I witnessed in 1990. Also, I have a question. After every major accident, the identification of decomposing bodies turns a humungous task. It is a situation that is repeated in every major accident. But why are we unable to isolate this problem and find the solution? Sadly, solutions exist. Embalming, AC coffins and AC morgue are all possible solutions. And I say with confidence because within six hours (10 PM- 4 AM) on May 16/17, 1990, I had managed to convert wards of Patna Medical College Hospital (where 400 victims of railway fire accident were under treatment) along with PMCH morgue to prevent three dozen corpses from decomposition.
FAIL-SAFE OR UNSAFE
After every railway accident, the Indian Railways is made an unwarranted whipping boy. Last week has been no exception. I have written six articles as if I could prevent not only the Odisha railway accident but banish railway accidents altogether. In the interim, I have also read over 100 articles and have listened to experts on TV discussing what is wrong with Indian Railways. Domestic experts (mostly ex-railway men) and international commentators have both hastened to prematurely write an obituary of Indian Railways. Almost all experts and members of the commentariat seem to conclude — “Indian Railways is an unsafe system standing at the brink of disaster.”
I begin with a hypothesis – “notwithstanding its legacy problems, given the complexity of the system and the circumstances it operates; IR is the safest mode of surface transport in India and compares well with its global peers”. Here lies the truth.
This part of the piece addresses the key issues — how unsafe the IR system is, what are the root causes of the present predicament of Indian Railways and what must be done to make IR system a fail-proof system.
THE TRUTH
Here is the truth. Indian Railways, spread over 68043 km route length, despite losing much of its sheen and the traffic to highways, retains its primacy as the preferred mode of transport and rightly retains the monicker of the lifeline of the nation. Here are the numbers-
One, the IR system is amongst the top four railway systems in the world. The system carries 24 million passengers daily. It translates to eight billion passengers annually and in addition, 1514 MT freight as originating traffic.
Two, to truly do justice to the massive operating load that IR carries and with the speed and efficiency it does, an article is not enough. And most articles and TV discourses in the aftermath of the Odisha train disaster that I have read and listened to, have whipped up IR telling it has complete disregard and neglect of safety norms. I say this is far from the truth. I say the conclusions are half-baked.
Three, a comparison of the safety standards of the IR system with that of road/highway safety level is an eye-opener. As per the comprehensive data set of the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB), in the last decade, 2.6 lakh people have died in various railway accidents in the country. It averages 26000 per year. NCRB classifies accidents into five categories – derailments, collisions/fires, people falling from trains or getting run over by them and other causes.
A deep dive into the railway accident data shows that most deaths are from people falling from trains or trains colliding with people getting run over by them. Also, there has been an improvement over the last decade – 27765 deaths in 2013 to 16,431 in 2021.
Regarding the death toll consequential rail accidents, it hardly crosses a couple of thousand a year and the number of both dead and injured has gone down in recent decades.
COMPARISON-THE KILLER ROADS
I next compare death in a railway accident to death in a road/highway accident basing the comparison with the NCRB data set. Every year, one out of ten persons dying on roads/highways globally dies in India. In the year 2021, a total of 153000 people died in accidents on roads/highways in India. It translates on average into 1130 accidents and 422 deaths every day, or 47 accidents and 18 deaths every hour.
While the number of dead and injured in IR systems has been going down, in the case of roads and highways, it is going up. In 2021, the number of accidents increased by 12.6 percent over the previous year while the fatalities and injuries rose by 16.9 percent and 10.3 percent.
THE EMOTIVE BUG
Unbeknownst to most observers, Indian Railways has shown a credible track record in reducing accidents. The more I investigate cases of incidents and accidents in IR (relating to passengers, railway staff and trespassers), the more reasons I have to be proud of the system which has reduced accidents over a period of time despite facing severe resource crunch. The accidents in all key categories — level crossing, derailment, fire accident and collisions — have drastically reduced despite the fact that between 1951-2021, both passengers and freight traffic have grown many folds while the growth and modernization of the railway infrastructure including 400000 rolling stock (locomotives, passenger coaches and freight wagons) has not kept pace.
But the Indian Railways is not merely a transport mode. It is the lifeline of Indians and an accident involving Indian Railways is a huge emotive issue. And an accident involving human death soon takes the form of a cacophonic dissection of what went wrong or who was responsible. Emotions fly high and the commentators, experts and Opposition all clamour for the head of the railway minister. We argumentative Indians find it difficult to forget and forgive and want swift punishment at the highest level but as it has happened in the Odisha accident, the attention time span is so fickle that in seven days, people have moved on. The accident is out of front page and edit page of newspapers, the prime time of TV channels and cacophony of social media.
MISSION ZERO
It is precisely because of such an emotive compact of Indian Railways to the populace, that for me, a railway man of four decades, despite railways having reduced the number and the impact of railway accidents hundred times over the past 75 years, the optimist in me is not satisfied. And I believe IR must pursue Mission Zero. And I have reasons why the IR needs the nostrum of ‘Mission Zero’ – zero accidents/incidents and zero fatalities.
India already has dethroned China as the most populous country in the world. With a $3.2 trillion economy, it has also dethroned the UK to become the fifth largest economy. At 7.2 percent growth rate, India is the fastest-growing economy in the world. By 2047, the country wants to turn into a developed country. And to make the above happen, the IR system has to play a critical role and if that be the case, it has to be fighting fit with zero accident and zero fatality to be a war cry.
But to make it happen, we need to first reverse the vicious cycle in which Indian Railways has been for the bulk of the independence period.
VICIOUS CIRCLE
An accident in an Indian Railway system is a symptom. The real reason is the culture of using the IR system for over 75 years as a “cash cow” without commensurate investment to keep it as a going concern. In this section, I examine a few of the critical missteps that have landed the IR in a vicious circle before attempting to tell what needs to be done.
One, ever since the independence, IR largely was used and treated as the “jagir” of the incumbent railway minister. The result was that with every minister, IR went forward and four steps backwards. One can count on fingertips the railway ministers who acted in the interest of IR.
Two, once the era of the coalition governance at the Centre began, the railway from being the “jagir” of the railway minister overnight was catapulted “dahej” to be given to the most raucous coalition partner. The era of 1991 to 2014 specifically belongs to this period. I have no compunction in adding here that during this period, the IR became terminally ill.
Three, at independence, the country inherited a system that suffered from chronic underinvestment due to complete neglect of the system during the second world war. Added were the problems created in the aftermath of the separation of the railway system.
Four, any student of the trajectory of the growth taken by IR since independence would tell the tale of the gross underinvestment in the railways, be it the area of critical track renewal work, replacement of the aging rolling stock (passenger coaches, locomotives and goods wagons) and the lack of modernization of signalling and communication.
Five, as someone who has been analysing railways finances for quite some time, I humbly posit that for the past few decades, the railway finances have been in tatters. Barring an exceptional year of business or an odd year of creative accounting, the IR Operating Ratio has been tantalizingly close to 100 and in some cases more than 100. The operating ratio in 2021-22 is more than 103 and in 2019-20, according to the CAG, the operating ratio stood at 114.35 which meant that to earn 100 paise, IR spent 114.35 paise.
With such pathetic finances, IR since time immemorial is devoid of internal accrual to make both ends meet. Internal resources for safety work or other key maintenance issues are just not available.
Six, a critical reason for the deteriorating financial condition of Indian Railways is its ever-ballooning social obligations. The net social obligation has increased from 4107.61 crore in 2005-06 excluding staff welfare cost (Rs 1541.69 crore) and law and order cost (Rs 958.91 crore) to Rs 49,854.33 crore in 2021-22 excluding staff welfare cost (Rs 8,312.26 crore) and law and order cost (Rs 5,727.75 crore).
These costs of ballooning social service obligations not only severally impinge upon the viability of the Indian Railways system but combined with a high operating ratio do not leaver IR with the necessary fund to take up critical work related to safety.
Also, the political game of using IR as employment exchange and the consequent wage and pension charges have proved to be death knell for financial health.
Seven, poor resources, poor infra and lack of empowerment. Para 3 of the Executive Summary of the High-Powered Committee on Safety (2912) headed by the noted scientist Dr Anil Kakodkar is candid. Given the salience of the central message of the paragraph, I present it verbatim below-
“Present environment of Indian Railways reveals a grim picture of inadequate performance largely due to poor infrastructure and resources and lack of empowerment at the functional level. The present form of railway organization is more centralized, top-heavy and hierarchical along departmental lines much to the detriment of a functional and objective-oriented organization. The commitment and passion of its strong workforce of 13.62 lakhs though commendable has done little to translate into productive action due to the present environment…IR has to be energized with a new type of work culture.”
Eight, make no mistake, India, instead of opting for a balanced mobility infrastructure on the lines of China (which has invested more and more in railways and water transport and substantially less on the road infrastructure) has preferred to take America’s way by traversing the unsustainable path of surrendering to the motorization by over-emphasis on creating roads/highway infrastructure. The result has been continued over investment in roads/highways and underinvestment in railways.
How much skewed is India’s investment in the road and highway infrastructure? I say, maybe more than the annual expenditure on the country’s defence. In the 2023-24 union budget, the outlay for the roads and highway sector is pegged at Rs 2,70,435 crore. This is 25 percent higher than the revised estimates for 2022-23. Also, the outlay of Rs 2,70,435 crore on roads/highways is next only to Rs 5,54,875 crore outlay for defence. And this is not the full story. When it comes to the roads/highways sector, apart from the Union government, states compete with each other to build road infrastructure and I suspect if we add the total expenditure of the Centre and states on the road highways, one should not be surprised if it turns out to be more than defence sector’s expenditure.
RAILWAY: THE POOR COUSIN
The more India invests in the creation of roads/highway infrastructure, the bigger killer our roads and highways turn into.
How much do we invest in railways?
With all due regard to a galaxy of veterans having ruled over railways for decades, none truly thought that railway needs investment too. Most were content with milking the cash cow railways. And I have to admit that investment in railways is one area where the Modi government has a better track record than its predecessors. The budget outlay for railways in the financial year 2023-24 is Rs 2.6 crore (next only to defence and highways) compared to Rs 1.40 lakh crore in FY 2022-23.
IT IS NOT ENOUGH
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the 2023-24 capital outlay for the IR is nine times the amount provided in 2013-2014, my submission is it is not enough. And reasons are two-fold. Firstly, Indian Railways suffers from a serious infrastructure deficit (it has to upgrade tracks, bridges, modernise rolling stock, and revolutionise signalling and communication) to meet the current needs of fail-safe mobility and simultaneously has to fast-track the task of getting ready to meet the mobility needs of a developed nation. And the time is running out.
HOW MUCH MONEY IR NEEDS?
To pick up the verbatim quote of the Railway Minister in a summit in 2022, Indian Railways, at the minimum, needs to consistently invest Rs three lakh crore annually to meet the aspiration of the people and lower logistics cost. He also said countries in competing situation are investing rupees nine lakh crores for past few decades.
If one asks me how much investment IR needs, I will say what I keep telling. Just look East. Look at China. Do what China has done. And do it better because China was the most populous country in the world, and now India is the most populous nation.
CHANGING SAFETY ORIENTATION IS POSSIBLE
Indian Railways, of late, has picked up on investment. But the recent changes are more focused on higher-speed trains and passenger amenities. It is time to now invest in infrastructure (man, machine and governance) for safety. Pathways are known. If need be, look at safety committee reports to refresh memory. But move fast. IR has no time to waste.
Akhileshwar Sahay is a Multidisciplinary Thought Leader and India based International Impact Consultant. He works as President Advisory Services of consulting company BARSYL. Views are personal.
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