‘Railways Wakes Up Briefly After A Tragedy, Then Goes Back To Sleep’
Tej Bahadur Singh, a frequent train traveller, feels that the Railways need to be more professionally handled and not act as fire brigade. His views:
The recent stampede at the New Delhi railway station not only raised questions about the professional capabilities of the railways to handle a sudden burst of crowd but also put a blot on the Maha Kumbh 2025. How could you substantiate and pat your back by crafting out a holding area after the damage is done? Looking into the huge inflow of crowd by all possible means of transport, shouldn’t such preventive steps have been taken well in advance to save the loss of lives?
What I could make out (through various news inputs) that the incident happened due to sheer negligence and miscommunication between various agencies who were responsible for the smooth movement of trains and passengers. I was surprised to see (on a news channel) two different claims made by two agencies – the passengers confused between similar names of two trains and two confusing announcements.
It’s not that such a huge inflow was not expected or it was sudden – the Kumbh started on January 13th and had already witnessed a stampede in the Mela on January 29th that killed over two dozen and injured many. All news mediums were full of news and inputs about the intensity and size of the crowd travelling towards Prayagraj by all kinds of means. Were such inputs missed out by the railways or they were over confident about their preparations?
If I, as a common man, could clearly see the reasons behind the tragedy and suggest possible remedies, how can one of the biggest organizations in the world miss them?
There was a sudden surge in the sale of unreserved tickets (from 7000 to over 9500) in the peak hours and this could have been easily stopped after reaching an admissible limit and the public should have been stopped from entering the railway station. If there is some procedure to check over selling of unreserved tickets, it should be followed or if there is no such thing in practice, it should be adopted.
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Another `inefficiency’ that has been highlighted everywhere is that confusing announcements (regarding trains and platforms) were made triggering chaos that transformed into a stampede. What I could suggest is that in case of such a situation, there should be a central announcement unit that should handle and broadcast sensitive information with additional words of caution.
Another broadly visible sign was the crowd that was increasing and swelling out of proportion every minute. It is not that the crowd swelled suddenly but it took hours before things blew out of proportion leading to the fatal accident. Might be a possibility that the railways were caught off guard but the Local Intelligence Unit also failed to gauge the situation well in advance. The LIU should pass information related to movement of huge turnout towards the railway stations to competent authorities so that preparations could be made well in advance to avert such incidents.
Now, the loss of lives could not be substantiated in any manner, the railways and other authorities should take a strict lesson from this and make foolproof arrangements for such events and gatherings in the near future.
As told to Rajat Rai
