Nearly 28 passengers of the Chennai bound Tamil Nadu express were charred to death and another 25 injured when a blaze broke out in the early hours of Monday due to an alleged short circuit. This is the tenth accident that has happened in the past 7 months of the current year. These incidents highlight the poor safety records as well as the pathetic condition of the railways as a whole.

The story is pretty much the same each year with more than 15-20 such accidents caused either by their poor safety standards or due to operational errors of their own staff. The lack of alertness and negligence of the on- duty staff leads to such accidents as most of them occur between 10pm and 6am.Who will take the moral responsibility for loss of lives and huge resources? In no other place in the world do we see two standing trains colliding suddenly or a stationary train starting to move on its own in the reverse direction. Many expert committee reports say that these are due to malfunctioning brakes. 30%of the derailments are caused by defective tracks. Most of these errors are avoidable with simple measures like regular technical checks.

There are safety issues pertaining to not only the engineering standards but also in terms of crime with theft being commonplace during night journeys. Stories of sleeping passengers being drugged who wake up the next day to find their valuables gone are more frequent than not. Not all women passengers feel safe traveling alone. The recent homicide of a young PhD student, who tried to chase thugs that stole his documents in the railway station at Bihar was yet another sad reminder of the inaction that prevails in the system.

The 159 year old department is a sick and aging one and is in desperate need of an overhaul. The train journey itself has become a horror show for ordinary passengers nowadays with services and conditions of trains getting from bad to worse. Other than the badly maintained toilets which run out of water within a few hours of the start of the journey, the whole compartment is infested with rodents and pests like cockroaches and bedbugs, which can transmit communicable diseases. Even the snacks served on the trains are very bad and most of the travelers have no choice but to buy them when the journeys are long. What does the world’s so called largest railway system have to boast of when it cannot arrange for basic cleanliness and hygiene in the compartments?

The network spread across 64400 kms is the largest public sector company with the greatest manpower. But despite the abundant human resources and a significant amount of income generated it is in shambles only because of the taking- for- granted attitude of the railway ministers and officials. Railway ministry is one of the important ministries for which the members of the parliament heavily campaign for. But it is plagued by corruption and inefficiency. This is because over the years the railway ministers have used this department as a cash cow for their own political and economical ambitions. The vast income is being channelized to benefit their own constituencies which will be their future vote banks rather than investing in long term needs of the system. Moreover the ministry has failed to implement the recommendations of the various committees set up to improve the safety and hygiene standards.

As the governance is getting from bad to worse the only hope to improve the standards of railways and prevent it from heading for disaster is allowing the insolvent of private sector.

Article Posted By : aneesha  On August 01, 2012lView All Articles

Article Source :

http://www.veethi.com/articles/the-great-indian-railway-horror-show-article-904.htm

Keywords :
railways , corruption