What is stopping the Indian Railways from adopting technological solutions in this day and age to ensure infrastructure and human errors don't cause fatal accidents?
Safety is a significant issue in the context of mobility and needs needs special attention both, at the strategic and operational levels. In a 'controlled' environment like rail transportation, if safety is compromised, it is not acceptable. There have been four major accidents involving passenger trains within the past one year, three of which resulted in fatalities. The two most recent ones happened on August 19th evening and August 23, in the early morning.
There have been a string of many more accidents, which as per the Railways' statistics, have been dropping year-on-year on an annual basis. However, the nature of these accidents, caused by avoidable failures of infrastructure or human error is worrisome. What is of greater concern is the reaction of having heads roll and directing that responsibility be fixed by the ‘end of day’. This would fail to address the basic problems.
As a consequence, after the accident of August 23, Ashwani Lohani, an officer of the Indian Railways Service of Mechanical Engineers, serving as the Chairman of Air India, was brought in as the Chairman of the Railway Board.
Interestingly, Lohani, had posted a comment about the August 19 accident on Facebook, on August 20:
“The tragic railway disaster is a glaring symptom of the crying need for structural and process reform cutting across hierarchies down up to the ground level that this great organization needs, along with a genuine focus on HR.”
I would wish him all the best in getting the Indian Railways to really have a sharp focus on safety.
[This article has been published with permission from IIM Bangalore. www.iimb.ac.in Views expressed are personal.]