Offtrack, glitchy & incompetent

It seems blaming the railway officials alone for train accidents might not be enough, since the administration at both the state and central levels is equally guilty as charged. Lack of transparency, red tape, neglecting the safety reports and failing to upgrade the global positioning systems and other state-of-the-art equipments, required to ensure an accident-proof railway network, are bogging down the already beleaguered transport system. Although the Indian railways is one of the biggest employers in the world and can boast of the longest rail track network as well, internal inquires time and time attest to the deplorable fact the snag is more in the minds of the railway authorities than on the tracks themselves.

Millennium Post has reported how an internal inquiry has yielded that railways has not only failed to fully commission the modern preventive mechanisms to avoid accidents, but it has also not implemented proper trials of the GPS-based ‘fog safe device’, aimed at giving accurate readings of the location signals. Most of the trials have resulted in unreliable and inconclusive readings, thereby indicating that overhaul of equipment is urgently needed. Moreover, even the anti-collision device has run into problems, with operational and technical glitches awaiting resolutions.

Certainly, if the Indian railways, notorious for having some of the worst rail accidents in the history of the technology, does not fix its pervasive problems, it’s bound to remain in the backwaters of international transport industry and a threat to life and property for the millions of commuters.