Gloom with a silver lining

There is no doubt that the unfortunate train accident that India witnessed on June 2 would be registered as one of the country’s deadliest train disasters in decades. However, at the same time, it would also be remembered for exemplary case of rescue operation by the Odisha government under the leadership of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, and completion of track restoration work in a record time of 51 hours by a team of over 3,000 employees of the Indian Railways under the ‘direct’ supervision of Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw — an Odisha-cadre bureaucrat-turned-politician.

It’s also a great irony for Vaishnaw that the fourth deadliest train accident has occurred in Bahanaga of Odisha’s Balasore district where he was the collector during his IAS tenure, and is now a member of Rajya Sabha from the state.

In brief, the tragic train accident occurred just ahead of the Bahanaga Bazar station under the Balasore district of Odisha after the Coromandel Express train entered the loop line where the goods train was parked. As per traffic signaling records, the signal was in favour of Coromandel Express, but the loop was not set for the superfast train.

The 12841 Shalimar-MGR Chennai Central Coromandel Express entered the passing loop instead of the main line near Bahanaga Bazar railway station at full speed and collided with a goods train. Due to the high speed of the Coromandel Express, its 21 coaches derailed and three of those collided with the oncoming 12864 SMVT Bengaluru-Howrah SF Express on the adjacent track.

Both — UP (onwards) and DN (downwards) — tracks have become operational, and Coromandel Express also resumed its services to ferry passengers from Shalimar in West Bengal to Chennai from June 7 onwards.

Given the ‘work culture’ of Indian Railways, it’s a fact that such an appalling rail accident that took the lives of 288 people and left over 1,100 injured is not going to be the last. India has witnessed such horrifying rail accidents in the past too – under the present Modi regime and during the rule of others. The grave concern about the June 2 Odisha train accident is that it happened despite the zone having an advanced and fool-proof signalling system in place.

However, none of the trains in the crash were equipped with anti-collision equipment nor was the section covered by the National Automatic Train Protection System or Kavach.

It’s been reported that both the trains were carrying more than 2,200 passengers with reserved tickets. However, the record of passengers travelling in unreserved coaches is yet to be ascertained and, as per experts, it may not be discovered in the future too.

Any accident during any regime always becomes a ‘political fodder’ for both the Opposition parties and the ruling alliance to take on each by digging out the previous records and using it as a tool to corner each other for the political gains or, one may say, perception correction.

Blaming Vaishnaw for the worst train accident, the principal Opposition Congress has demanded resignation of the railways minister and attacked the minister for covering up his ‘misdeeds’ by recommending the probe by CBI.

Despite being one of the worst train accidents of the country, the case of Odisha triple train collision is different from other horrific train tragedies, such as Bihar train derailment that had occurred when a train fell into the river Bagmati while crossing a bridge, killing over 800 people on June 6, 1981. The reason: It has occurred at a time when the Indian Railways is transforming itself by revamping technology, augmenting infrastructure, skilling manpower, 100 per cent electrification, redevelopment of stations with world-class amenities, etc.

In an added advantage, Vaishnaw, who is at the helm of affairs of Indian Railways, is also heading the ministries of Telecommunications and Electronics & Information Technology.

As per the experts dealing in disaster management, it was the outcome of his technological acumen that worked in favour of Vaishnaw, who issued ‘on spot’ instructions to concerned officials regarding the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based applications in establishing the identity of train crash victims through Sanchar Saathi Portal and UIDAI system of identification.

The Sanchar Saathi Portal, which was launched by Vaishnaw in May 2023, proved to be a great saviour for railways in identifying unclaimed bodies. With the help of Sanchar Saathi Portal, which was launched to track and control the multiple mobile numbers issued against a single person as well as tracking a phone, the railways was able to establish the identity of more than 150 victims.

The role of state-owned telecom service provider Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) cannot be ‘ignored’ as it went beyond the limits to provide uninterrupted connectivity to all users by establishing make-shift mobile towers at Bahanaga Bazar station, and opened the use of make-shift towers for all telecom service providers without any fee. The swift action taken by the BSNL in streamlining connectivity at ground zero could not be matched by any profit-centric private players.

There is a lot of hullabaloo about several union ministers, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, making a visit to the accident site and supervising the officials tasked to expedite the rescue operation.

Every railway minister under the regime of the Modi government has witnessed train accidents. Be it Sadananda Gowda, Suresh Prabhu, Piyush Goyal or Ashwini Vaishnaw – all have gone through the critical phase of train mishaps.

Like Vaishnaw, all his predecessors had also visited the accident sites – some went for a few hours, while others visited the site after several hours of the mishap, and in one such train mishap, a former railway minister didn’t turn up to take stock of the situation. But no former rail minister has ever been at the site for over a day.

Given that the Biju Janata Dal (BJD)-ruled state is scheduled to go for assembly elections, along with the Lok Sabha elections, in early 2024, political analysts see the visit of ministers from the ruling dispensation, chief ministers of West Bengal and Odisha, and leaders from Opposition parties, from the political lens.

The political analysts have opined that it may be one among many other reasons that Prime Minister Narendra Modi made an “appearance” at the crash site for nearly 20 minutes, and later met the injured at a Balasore hospital.

Similar views have also been expressed about the “photoshoots” of the railway minister who remained at the accident site for around three days, and led the rescue operation by inspecting the crash sites. In photos/videos coming out from the site, Vaishnaw was seen beneath the mangled coaches, atop of an engine, sitting on a stone in the night, etc.

The railways’ war room played a key role in conducting rescue operations, as 3,000 people worked round the clock for 51 hours to ensure that the tracks were laid, bodies cleared and trains set running at the Balasore triple train tragedy site.

The Delhi war room of the railway ministry monitored the work as emergency workers spent more than 48 hours since Saturday night (June 3), doing tasks whose scale was not only extensive but also needed precision and sensitivity.

And monitoring all of this, while working with states, were eight teams of 50-70 people at the ministry’s war room. There was a DRM or a GM in charge of 300 each, with a Railway Board member monitoring at least three of them.

The war room in Delhi was equipped with five cameras to put in place a communication system to alert which team needed what on the site, and also to

ensure there was backup of workforce and material after every eight hours. The chairman of the Railway Board, DG Health and a senior official were given charge of the two hospitals in Cuttack and the mortuary. Special teams of 70 people worked on repairing tracks and overhead electric cables.

Among the leaders who visited the crash site include union ministers Dharmendra Pradhan, Mansukh Mandaviya, MoS Education Subhas Sarkar, etc. Pradhan, who hails from Odisha, was the first to visit the site along with Vaishnaw.

Given that a huge number of migrant workers from West Bengal travel in Coromandel Express in search of better livelihood in Chennai, West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee also visited the crash site. Leader of Opposition and Congress West Bengal unit chief Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury was also tasked by the party to visit the site and take stock of the situation.

Apart from all of them, the man who will be known for saving the lives and taking out bodies from mangled coaches as well as providing medical assistance on urgent basis is Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik, along with his team of officials led by Odisha chief secretary Pradeep Jena – a 1989 batch IAS of Odisha cadre. Jena was the first person to visit the site along with his team and started a rescue operation soon after the accident.

If Vaishnaw is being credited for fast-tracking operation of trains in 51 hours, Patnaik, undisputedly, needs to be credited for expediting rescue operations without a complaint.

The rescue operation conducted by the Odisha government may prove to be an exemplar of state-centre co-ordination to manage the crisis. Hopefully, other state governments will also take it as a lesson for future purposes.

When others were busy encashing the opportunity to mint money, the Odisha government was plying free bus services for Kolkata from Puri, Bhubaneswar and Cuttack for stranded passengers.

The free bus service operation was carried out under the supervision of Arun Bothra – a 1996 batch Odisha cadre IPS officer. Bothra, who hails from Rajasthan – the home state of Vaishnaw — is Transport Commissioner in the state and had served as CMD in Odisha State Road Transport Corporation from January 2020 to June 2022.

Apart from the administration, people also stepped in to help the victims. Showcasing that adversity is the real test of humanity, people near the accident site turned into saviours as they rushed to hospitals in large numbers to donate blood for the bleeding victims. The response of people was so overwhelming that beyond a certain point, hospitals had to refuse taking blood, stating that they don’t need blood anymore!

Reasons

The reason for the accident is not yet officially announced. However, former officials and experts are of the view that it’s a result of railways work culture of taking ‘short cuts’ to meet the ‘punctuality’ target by setting aside the safety protocols of the national transporter, and putting the life of commuters at ‘high risk.’

Railway Minister Vaishnaw has said that interference with the ‘configuration’ of the track led to the Coromandel Express hitting the stationary goods train from behind at Bahanaga Bazar station.

“Whoever has done this, has done such a change on the point machine…the configuration of the track – based on which everything runs … There has been a change in that configuration, due to which a thin accident has happened. But I will comment on that only after the report of the independent agency is submitted,” the minister said.

In this horrific train accident, the reasons behind the mismatch of signal and loop are being probed by the Commissioner of Railways Safety (CRS) – an independent agency that does not report to railways — and the CBI which has expertise in probing criminal cases.

Notably, the electric ‘point machine’ is an important device in the railways signalling system for quick operation and locking of point switches. It plays a key role in the safe running of trains.

As the report of CRS is still awaited and the CBI, which has also started its probe after registering FIR, is yet to make any remark on the reasons behind the one of worst train tragedies in the country, the experts have indicated ‘system failure’ as the key reason behind most of the train crashes.

The railways is more focused on maintaining 90 per cent punctuality due to which track maintenance work is not done with due diligence.

“As ‘blocks’ are not provided for track maintenance, so they take ‘short cuts’ to keep movement of trains operational. The railways has not yet learned any lesson from the 2017 Khatauli train derailment as track repair work was being done without any block,” a former official said, adding that union members have also threatened several times they would work as per rule if their men would be targeted for accidents and other lapses.

“It’s a fact that if railways employees start following its rule book, the punctuality of trains would come down to 40 per cent. It means the rule book is not workable. So, the ground staff are bound to take short-cuts to maintain punctuality,” the former official said. However, the official added that if the railways had utilised the golden opportunity of lockdown, necessitated due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in expediting the maintenance of tracks, there would have been a total makeover of tracks and such accidents would have been avoided.

Solutions

The dedicated freight corridors, established after spending crores of rupees of public money, have not yet been fully operational despite the fact that they are ready to script a new success story. The government should start the operation of dedicated freight corridors on an immediate basis to reduce the freight traffic on passenger routes. The problem with this is that its operation is being delayed due to conflict of interest over revenue losses. The rates of freight have also not been decided, and railways are not making available trains, citing revenue loss.

Once all freight trains would be shifted from passenger train routes to the dedicated freight corridors, then the railways would get enough reaction time for maintenance of tracks.

The second suggestion that has come from experts is about formation of a truly independent body for safety audits on the lines of the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). The mandate of the apex safety audit unit should be conducting safety audits on a regular basis without any intervention. The composition of members of the safety audit should be of technical experts from different countries and India.

The third remarkable suggestion is honing the professional skills of railways’ staff. The railways that is vying to become a world class transporter, needs to focus on training their staff to become accustomed to the all-latest technologies.

Personal touch

Incidentally, Vaishnaw has served as the collector of Balasore in the past. He has vast experience in disaster management, and during the cyclone, Balasore was the only district that had reported least loss of lives when he was at the helm of affairs in the district.

In 1999, Vaishnaw’s efforts were at the centre of Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s management of one of the worst super cyclones that hit the state. It was after this disaster which claimed nearly 10,000 lives that the state came up with the Odisha

Disaster Rapid Action Force (ODRAF), the first of its kind agency in the country that even predates the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), which was set up in 2006. His personal equation with Patnaik, who has seen Vaishnaw’s work, also helped in fast-tracking the work.

HEROIC ACT OF ODISHA GOVT

On June 2, within half an hour of the train disaster, a team of 30 ODRAF personnel had reached the site from Balasore and swung into action.

Within two to three hours, four more teams comprising 120 additional personnel had arrived from Kalinganagar, Baripada, Bhubaneswar and Dhenkanal, and were later joined by multiple teams of Odisha Fire Services and NDRF.

The ODRAF personnel had with them tower lights, gas cutters, plasma cutters and hydraulic spreaders.

“The death toll could have been much higher had the government of Odisha not intervened in time. The expeditious mobilisation of the ODRAF and fire service teams saved the lives of 1,200 injured,” Odisha Industries Secretary Hemant Sharma, who monitored the rescue operation on the ground, said.

Views expressed are personal