What is the issue?
- Safety in the Indian Railways have always been a challenge.
- Compartmental functioning of various departments of the railways has been identified as the major reason.
What does the Khatauli derailement say?
- Track repairing staff didn’t get a permitted block by the traffic department.
- So they took the risk of carrying out their work without stopping movement of trains.
- This led to the derailment of Uttkal express at Khatauli in UP – killing 23 people and injuring many
- This has highlighted the lack of co-ordination among departments within the organisation.
What is current status of the railways?
- Indian has over 90,000 km of railway tracks and hundreds of trains hurtle across, carrying millions of passengers.
- The traffic load on the Indian Railways is ever increasing with some routes nearly reaching saturation level.
- This leaving little cushion for maintenance.
- Also, the tracks are currently under great pressure after the 2005 increase of the permissible loading capacity for each wagon.
- Large projects to relieve the pressure, like the construction of dedicated freight corridors are in the pipeline, but will take time.
What are the issues with ‘Debroy Committe’ suggestions?
- In 2014, Debroy Committee was set-up suggest reforms and break the compartmentalisation of operations in the railways.
- Its final report suggested big structural changes and called for the introduction of ‘management generalism’ as against specialisation.
- One suggestion even called for the merger of all Group ‘A’ ngineering & civil services of the railways into one unified service.
- Drawbacks – These suggestions are immature as present system was evolved to handle the enormous size of the Indian railways.
- It is also rooted in the belief that specialists are too technical to have a strong vision, which is fundamentally wrong.
- Also, reducing departments for better co-ordination in a massive organisations like the railways is not desirable.
- If accepted, this could lead to the erosion of accountability and would be disastrous for railway safety & management.
What is the way ahead?
- A mechanism for departments to flourish and voice their genuine concerns is what is needed for enhancing co-ordination.
- Use of new techniques for assessing aptitudes, capabilities and cohesion are to be developed.
- Ultimately, appropriate powers should be vested in the DRMs, GMs and the Railway Board for hazzle free decision making.
Source: Indian Express
