Rail Logistics : INDIAN RAILWAY INCIDENT...AGAIN & AGAIN BUT HOPEFULLY NEVER AGAIN!

Train accidents may be common in India. And fire breaking out on the Indian trains is becoming a yearly occurrence.  Yesterday, 28-Dec-2013, a fire blaze in a passenger train carriage killed at least 26 people in the state of Andhra Pradesh. Last year, 30-Jul-2012, another train on fire incident in the same state sacrificed 47 lives and in 20-Nov-2011, 7 people were dead as a result of train on fire in Jharkhand. As per the train operator, Indian Railways, the root causes are always said to be short circuit of either air conditioning systems or other ELECTRICAL equipments of the train. We should really hope the actual basis of the fire are identified and avoided in future. Merely declaring that the cause of fire are from the equipments, may be accepted as an accident if it happens just once but if it happens every year, it appears as an act deliberately done by the railway operator to endanger people’s lives. These incidents are excluding of the country’s other train accidents caused by different reasons that took thousands of lives since the last 5 years. May the souls of the people who died in the accidents rests in peace and we shall pray that such disaster does not transpire again.   

Trains services in India are the key public transportation operation with a network of 115,000 km, connecting the entire country. Some 9000 passenger trains are operated, serving 18 million people daily in the country. The operator of the world’s 4^th largest train network, Indian Railways is an Indian state-owned enterprise under the arm of Ministry of Railways, Government of India. The employment number by the enterprise exceeds 1.4 million people which are the 9^th largest in the world. The history of the Great Indian Railways operations dates back to the year 1853. Their expertise in railway engineering is also imported by many countries including Malaysia. Nonetheless, why do frequent train accidents continue to ensue in India? Of course, with recent implementations of safety measures, the numbers of accidents are reduced but the idea of the repetitive causes makes it unacceptable.

Hence, can such sad incidents not happen anymore? What is needed to be implemented for prevention? Stricter rules? Better safety procedures? Besides blaming and pressuring only the train operators, the passengers’ behaviour plays a vital role to minimize train accidents. They should be more responsible of their safety, adhere to all regulations and quit any acts that will deprive or destroy public amenities. Indian Railways’ current logo symbolizes that it is the “lifeline of the nation”. However, we do not want the railways to be known as means to deflate the lifeline of the nation. It is not just a question of reliability of railway transport in India but also the logistics industry of the world.

Source : BBC News ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-25533209# )

Thank you.

Best regards,

Mahinder Singh Malhi