Railway safety — listen to the voices from below

Source- The post is based on the article “Railway safety — listen to the voices from below” published in “The Hindu” on 17th June 2023.

Syllabus: GS3- Infrastructure

Relevance- Issues related to railway safety

News- The triple train collision near Balasore in Odisha on June 2 led to the tragic loss of over 280 lives.

What is the record of railways on safety in recent times?

Statistics show that over the last two decades, the number of derailments has drastically declined from around 350 per year around the turn of the millennium, to 22 in 2021-22. This is a commendable achievement by any standards.

This has been achieved despite a nearly threefold increase in freight loading and more than a doubling of passenger traffic.

What is one aspect of railway safety that has not received sufficient attention?

This concerns the flow of information regarding unsafe practices or situations on a real-time basis.

Unlike many other organisations, the activities of the Railways are spread geographically over a wide area.

It involves a multiplicity of departments. They need to work in close coordination on a real-time basis to ensure the smooth and safe running of trains.

In order to ensure uniformity in the compliance of rules and regulations and safety, a large number of codes and manuals have been evolved for different departments to standardise the procedures.

Periodic field inspections are done by authorities at various levels. It ensures compliance with laid-down procedures and standards of workmanship.

Every department has evolved a set of schedules for the inspection of various work centres and operational procedures for every level of the management. This system suffers from a few drawbacks.

The “top-down” approach places the onus of detecting deviations on the higher authorities. They look down on the lower staff with suspicion and distrust.

It encourages window dressing and sweeping of problems under the carpet. There is a lack of transparency and frankness in such a situation.

This can be counterproductive in matters that concern railway safety. Many accidents are the culmination of unsafe practices or deviations from the norm over a period of time.

How real empowerment of lower staff can be done and how it is useful?

A system called Confidential Incident Reporting and Analysis System (CIRAS) was developed by one of the British universities nearly three decades ago.

This encourages the lower staff to point out deviations on a real-time basis, and the expression of frank view. This is an example of real empowerment of staff. The introduction of a similar reporting system on the Indian Railways is necessary.

The success and effectiveness of a CIRAS-like reporting system depends not only on the physical infrastructure. A total change in the mindset of the management, from the highest to the lower levels is required.

There must be an attitudinal change from the conventional approach of fault-finding and punishment to a shared commitment to ensure safety at all levels. The aim should be to correct, not punish.

What are other reforms needed for the railway?

There is a need for serious rethink on the recently introduced Indian Railways Management Service (IRMS) scheme. It can destroy loyalty and sense of “ownership” towards a particular department amongst the management cadre.

It is perhaps also time to revert to the earlier system of having a full-time Cabinet Minister for the Railways. There is a need for undivided attention at the highest policy-making level.