Since 2012, six out of every ten rail accidents in India have happened because of mistakes by or the negligence of railway staff, according to a study by NITI Aayog.
In the year to 31 March 2017, 66 of the 104 consequential rail accidents were attributed to the failure of railway staff according to Indian Railways data. And in the three months to 30 June, eight of 11 accidents were attributed to the failure of railway staff.
On Sunday, three top Indian Railways officials were ordered to go on leave and three more suspended after a report on the Kalinga-Utkal Express accident on Saturday that has so far resulted in around two dozen deaths blamed the negligence of railway staff.
Since 1960, Indian Railways has seen growth in infrastructure, expenditure, ridership and freight, but it has been steadfast in terms of accidents: roughly one every three days.
Safety on the Indian Railways network is the end product of the cohesive fusion of its myriad parts. Over 700,000 people work on safety-related operations at the country’s largest employer, according to Indian Railways’ response to a Parliament question.
A small slip by one of them or a single flaw in the 66,030 km track crisscrossing the country can affect one or more of 10,773 locomotives, 63,046 coaches and 245,000 wagons, jeopardising the 23 million passengers and three million tonnes of freight that the network carries every day.
Railway accidents happen due to several reasons.
An incorrect signal, a mistake or an act of negligence by one of its staff directly associated with the running of trains, deficiency in tracks, a rash act by one of the millions of road users, an irresponsible act by a passenger who carries inflammable goods. Added to these are the acts of sabotage.
Indian Railways claims safety is one of its main focuses, and while that may be the case, several worrying gaps point to action not matching intent.
For one, there’s the 16 per cent shortage in safety staff. As of 1 April, the total number of vacancies in safety staff was around 124,201. And this number has been growing steadily over the decades.
The shortage means that others have to work more and harder. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a loco (locomotive)-pilot (engine driver) said, “Our duty hours range from 12-16 hours a day, and then, there are the inhuman conditions in which we work. No toilets, no lunch break and engines have no seats.” “How do you expect us to give our best,” he asked? He adds that the government has failed to install toilets in all locomotives.
To be sure, Indian Railways’ safety record has to be seen against the backdrop of the growing scale and complexity of its operations.
“The pressure of freight and passenger trains doesn’t give us enough window to carry on repairs. If we cancel trains, freight and passengers are affected,” said a member of the railway board, the apex management body of Indian Railways.
Indian Railways has divided its 66,030 km of the track into 1,219 sections and out of these 492 are running at 100 per cent capacity, in some cases more. Most accidents occur on these over-capacity routes.
Based on the volume of traffic, Indian Railways’ safety record doesn’t look bad at all. “We have done our best. In the last one decade we have brought accidents per million train kilometres (an international standard to measure the performance of railways) down from 0.23 to 0.9 which shows our seriousness towards railways safety,” said Indian Railways spokesperson Anil Saxena.
Indeed, even the standing committee on Indian Railways mentioned the difficulty in finding time for maintenance of assets due to saturation of the current network as a concern when it submitted its report Safety and Security of Railways to Parliament on 3 August.
The committee also highlighted another issue—the fact that there is no “safety department”, which means that the function is overseen by several departments of Indian Railways. It said “inter-departmental differences” could reduce “efficiency, resulting in delayed response and compromises on safety.”
The railway board member cited above admitted that lack of coordination is one of the reasons for accidents and also why maintenance activities are sometimes not undertaken properly.
The committee also noted that Indian Railways faced several constraints while addressing safety issues, most notably the non-availability of funds to create additional capacity and modernise assets.
It recommended timely replacement of over-aged assets, adoption of suitable technologies for upgradation and maintenance of track, rolling stock, signalling and interlocking systems, safety drives, greater emphasis on training of officials and inspections at regular intervals.
Saxena said that for the ageing infrastructure the average expenditure on track renewal is around Rs 5,548 crore per year and this year it has been increased to Rs 9,961 crore. Similarly, safety-related expenditure has been increased every year —from Rs 42,430 crore in 2014-15 to Rs 65,241 crore in 2017-18.
A senior railway ministry official who asked not to be identified said, “We are trying our best to keep updated with the railway safety standards and devices. We have installed systems like Block Proving Axle Counters (BPAC), Auxilary Warning System (AWS), Train Protection and Warning System (TPWS), Train Collision Avoidance System (TCAS), etc. to aid frontline staff and reduce human dependence.” These systems are yet to cover the entire network.
Former railway board chairman Arunendra Kumar agrees: “The problem in India is not of safety standards but the execution of standards.”
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Steve Ovett, the famous British middle-distance athlete, won the 800-metres gold medal at the Moscow Olympics of 1980. Just a few days later, he was about to win a 5,000-metres race at London’s Crystal Palace. Known for his burst of acceleration on the home stretch, he had supreme confidence in his ability to out-sprint rivals. With the final 100 metres remaining,
[wptelegram-join-channel link=”https://t.me/s/upsctree” text=”Join @upsctree on Telegram”]Ovett waved to the crowd and raised a hand in triumph. But he had celebrated a bit too early. At the finishing line, Ireland’s John Treacy edged past Ovett. For those few moments, Ovett had lost his sense of reality and ignored the possibility of a negative event.
This analogy works well for the India story and our policy failures , including during the ongoing covid pandemic. While we have never been as well prepared or had significant successes in terms of growth stability as Ovett did in his illustrious running career, we tend to celebrate too early. Indeed, we have done so many times before.
It is as if we’re convinced that India is destined for greater heights, come what may, and so we never run through the finish line. Do we and our policymakers suffer from a collective optimism bias, which, as the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman once wrote, “may well be the most significant of the cognitive biases”? The optimism bias arises from mistaken beliefs which form expectations that are better than the reality. It makes us underestimate chances of a negative outcome and ignore warnings repeatedly.
The Indian economy had a dream run for five years from 2003-04 to 2007-08, with an average annual growth rate of around 9%. Many believed that India was on its way to clocking consistent double-digit growth and comparisons with China were rife. It was conveniently overlooked that this output expansion had come mainly came from a few sectors: automobiles, telecom and business services.
Indians were made to believe that we could sprint without high-quality education, healthcare, infrastructure or banking sectors, which form the backbone of any stable economy. The plan was to build them as we went along, but then in the euphoria of short-term success, it got lost.
India’s exports of goods grew from $20 billion in 1990-91 to over $310 billion in 2019-20. Looking at these absolute figures it would seem as if India has arrived on the world stage. However, India’s share of global trade has moved up only marginally. Even now, the country accounts for less than 2% of the world’s goods exports.
More importantly, hidden behind this performance was the role played by one sector that should have never made it to India’s list of exports—refined petroleum. The share of refined petroleum exports in India’s goods exports increased from 1.4% in 1996-97 to over 18% in 2011-12.
An import-intensive sector with low labour intensity, exports of refined petroleum zoomed because of the then policy regime of a retail price ceiling on petroleum products in the domestic market. While we have done well in the export of services, our share is still less than 4% of world exports.
India seemed to emerge from the 2008 global financial crisis relatively unscathed. But, a temporary demand push had played a role in the revival—the incomes of many households, both rural and urban, had shot up. Fiscal stimulus to the rural economy and implementation of the Sixth Pay Commission scales had led to the salaries of around 20% of organized-sector employees jumping up. We celebrated, but once again, neither did we resolve the crisis brewing elsewhere in India’s banking sector, nor did we improve our capacity for healthcare or quality education.
Employment saw little economy-wide growth in our boom years. Manufacturing jobs, if anything, shrank. But we continued to celebrate. Youth flocked to low-productivity service-sector jobs, such as those in hotels and restaurants, security and other services. The dependence on such jobs on one hand and high-skilled services on the other was bound to make Indian society more unequal.
And then, there is agriculture, an elephant in the room. If and when farm-sector reforms get implemented, celebrations would once again be premature. The vast majority of India’s farmers have small plots of land, and though these farms are at least as productive as larger ones, net absolute incomes from small plots can only be meagre.
A further rise in farm productivity and consequent increase in supply, if not matched by a demand rise, especially with access to export markets, would result in downward pressure on market prices for farm produce and a further decline in the net incomes of small farmers.
We should learn from what John Treacy did right. He didn’t give up, and pushed for the finish line like it was his only chance at winning. Treacy had years of long-distance practice. The same goes for our economy. A long grind is required to build up its base before we can win and celebrate. And Ovett did not blame anyone for his loss. We play the blame game. Everyone else, right from China and the US to ‘greedy corporates’, seems to be responsible for our failures.
We have lowered absolute poverty levels and had technology-based successes like Aadhaar and digital access to public services. But there are no short cuts to good quality and adequate healthcare and education services. We must remain optimistic but stay firmly away from the optimism bias.
In the end, it is not about how we start, but how we finish. The disastrous second wave of covid and our inability to manage it is a ghastly reminder of this fact.