Talking Shop: Mission Derailed

“It was a wreck happening

right in front of me and I

couldn't do anything about

it. I was not only watching,

I was also the train (itself).”

— Lisa Kleypas

It happened yet again last week. Receiving alerts on my mobile device about a train-wreck, I quickly put on the TV, whose screen zoomed in on Uttar Pradesh’s Gonda district, where several bogies of the Dibrugarh Express derailed after leaving Chandigarh. The sight was disturbing, yet all-too familiar – mangled railway bogies far away from the tracks they were supposed to be in love with, injured passengers staggering around, strewn luggage and baggage being scavenged upon, hordes of onlookers climbing atop the wreckage to lend a hand or satiate their curiosity, and hapless authorities shouting for calm amid the chaos.

Let’s walk down history lane. In August 1956, a rail accident in Andhra Pradesh killed 112. Owning moral responsibility, Railway Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri submitted his resignation, but then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru persuaded him to reconsider. In November 1956, another rail mishap in Tamil Nadu saw Shastri tender his resignation, pleading for its acceptance. In 1979, then rail minister Madhu Dandavate resigned after a rail mishap. In 1999, two trains collided in Gaisal, Bengal, which saw then Railway Minister Nitish Kumar resigning, saying he was “morally responsible”. Such qualities have today gone out of style, replaced by deep-seated turpitude.

This is perhaps because the office and the chair are now bigger than innocent deaths. We may recall that three trains collided in Balasore, with the Coromandel Express ramming into a goods train and derailing, sending coaches ploughing into the Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express, decapitating and killing 296. No resignations happened, though we did have leaders pretending on live TV to crawl out of ratholes where none existed, and burst into tears. A few days later, linemen and locomotive pilots were blamed for ‘negligence and human error’, which allegedly caused the accident.

No crying over spilt milk

The Gonda mishap is but the tip of an iceberg, taking a toll on commuters’ patience and trust. Bluntly put, how often do we need to go off-track before finding safe harbour? This was the second accident in two months, a staggering frequency. All that this latest tragedy does is manifest the new fashion trend that’s reserved for media cameras. Leaders discuss a distressing matter, speak of loss of life, prestige, or both, and suddenly burst into tears.

Amid the salty eruption, their heads loll left and right, threatening already-taxed shoulder muscles, chins drop deep into the chest, and the eyes brim over with tears. A minute or two later, cajoled by back-rubbing by morose-faced supporters, they continue. The trend was eye-catching when it began, even touching. But it has putrefied into a patience-testing sham that needs instant burial, especially as people aren’t taking it too kindly or handing out bouquets or sympathy anymore.

Leaders need to accept reality – when tragedy strikes, when the average Joe is impacted by accidents that are physical, fiscal or whimsical, he is bewildered, upset, irate and disgusted, not necessarily in that order. Leaders need to sniff out this change in the winds, especially as quite often after their weeping blitzkrieg, they are spotted waltzing into glitzy events, over-working their vocal chords and pumping their fists in a show of victory over some achieved or conceived success or the other. In the process, tragedy is trivialized and death turned into a morbid joke, one that is forgotten even before the tears dry up and the crocodiles open the mouth wide to take in much-anticipated bodily warmth and other largesse.

Spitting out the ‘Bullet’

When in India, how can we leave the politics out of things, especially those that go wrong? After the first (and before this second) rail mishap in recent times, firebrand TMC leader Mahua Moitra informed Parliament that Rs 1,08,000 crore has been earmarked for a single ‘Bullet Train’ between Mumbai and Ahmedabad. While that is fine and great for gathering eyeballs in the normal scheme of things, things are not normal at all.

Take the ‘Kavach’ device, which is said to be capable of preventing train derailments and other mishaps… It is not being implemented in totality across the Indian Railways’ network because of lack of funds. That’s rich, especially when we consider that the ‘Kavach-ifization’ of the entire railway network would cost a total of Rs 63,000 crore. Given our trumpeting wisdom, though, Kavach has been put on a slow-burner and will be implemented in phases, with the process set to be completed in 50 years. Till then, we can blame to loco pilots.

While on engine drivers (‘loco pilots’ indeed), here’s what they said to Rahul Gandhi over a ‘chance meeting’. A group of ‘lauhpathgamini-chaalaks’ (‘train drivers’) met the new Leader of the Opposition and said they were underprepared and overworked – “we are ill-trained, work 14-16 hours each day in hot conditions, with engine cabin temperatures above 50° Celsius”. The opposition went to town with these remarks, catalyzing the Railway Minister to issue a rejoinder and term these statements “highly exaggerated”. A back-and-forth ensued while India’s mostly Kavach-less trains continued to ferry 2.4 passengers a day.

Water off a duck’s back?

Soon, it will be next week. Something else will erupt to grab your attention, and mine. Frequently ‘treated’ by bad news over the years, we have become tough and immune to suffering, unless it hits us personally. The ceramic coating that India’s middle-class now flaunts shamelessly has travelled further than our cars; it is all over our very beings and repels any and all kinds of things we have deemed to be an “unpleasant hiccup”. After all, off-season hotel deals in Manali, watching the Next-Gen gyrate and contort their bodies on metro trains, or Novak getting Djokovic-ed at Wimbledon again are far more important.

In normal times, we could learn to live with an accident, perhaps even two. But times are not normal – on many fronts and from many perspectives. I recall what Eric Cantor said: “We have a fiscal train-wreck before us. Unless we act, and act deliberately, we are not going to enable our kids to have what we have. It’s (as) plain and simple as that.” Eerily enough, Cantor is right.

There are many things that are going wrong, and derailed or mutilated trains are but one of them. As a people and a nation, we need to act to limit the many fronts on which we face unavoidable debacles – the saving grace is that train wrecks are avoidable, as are most ills plaguing our lives. We just need to rush to the dangling mistletoe and smooch it with gusto and abandon. Let’s at least make the low-hanging fruit count, in more ways than one.

The writer is a veteran journalist and communications specialist. He can be reached on [email protected]. Views expressed are personal