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Stone age technology led to Gaisal

Amberish K Diwanji in New Delhi

Believe it or not, even Bangladesh uses better technology than India to ensure fewer accidents on its railway lines. With human error being cited as the prime reason for the ghastly Gaisal accident, where the death toll is nearing 300, what is being overlooked is that India also depends on obsolete technology and systems that have hardly changed over the decades.

Railway technology experts point out that for years now the railways have ignored technology upgradation. They added that the Gaisal accident was waiting to happen and had the government constantly kept pace with new technology available worldwide, it would never have occurred.

The Gaisal accident occurred because at four important points human error occurred. First, when the Avadh-Assam Express was placed on the same track as the Brahmaputra Mail at Kishanganj. And the second, third and fourth set of errors occurred when the Avadh-Assam Express passed the Panjipara station and two manned level crossing and yet no railway staff member even noticed that the train was on the wrong track, let alone give an emergency signal.

The technology specialists say that India lacks a centralised traffic control room. Such a control room would eliminate the dependence on the number of small stations along important routes with their station masters, linesmen and signalmen. "A master computer is needed to keep track of all the trains and their movements, and issue orders and signals accordingly. Depending on so many stations and individuals, without an overall framework, is disastrous," said one such technical expert.

Even Bangladesh has now begun to use the Global Positioning System that uses satellites to keep track of its train movements, but not India. "If Indian trains had the GPS, then the drivers of both the trains would have noted the location of the other on the same track and averted the head-on collision," the expert pointed out.

The Gaisal accident occurred because the inter-locking tracking system, the key to rail traffic, was not operational. The co-ordination between route setting and signalling was severed because some repair work was in progress. Advanced countries, incidentally, use the automatic train control system.

Worse, one of the train drivers did not follow the signal for the long stretch of Gaisal, one of the experts pointed out. But if India had the automatic control system, the problem of drivers overlooking red signals is eliminated because the control system automatically activates the brakes. The driver has no control over the braking system.

India still uses an antiquated system. Whenever the train approaches a signal, the driver and his assistant call out to each other the signal -- red, yellow or green as the case may be. Such a method has ample scope for human error. Also, on most trains, the guard and driver cannot even communicate with each other though there are efforts to fit trains with such devices.

Incidentally, it may be pointed out that the trains on the Bombay suburban network, one of the busiest in the world, are fitted with the auxiliary warning system, introduced after a spate of accidents in the 1980s. This has reduced the number of accidents remarkably.

"All this just shows the technological backwardness of the Indian Railways. The effort worldwide is to reduce the scope for human error by reducing the dependence on humans," say the technical experts.

The political leadership comes in for much of the blame. Over the years, politicians have used the railways to boost their popularity, caring little for the passengers. "New routes and trains are announced with fanfare, often with an eye on political mileage, and people are employed in hordes but no attention is paid to the technological needs and quality," the experts lamented.

Worse, there is the feeling among railway employees that railway accidents never receive the same attention as, say, an air crash because the latter might kill some of India's big shots. "Even our railway top brass fly around. Only the middle class and the poor use trains, and who cares for them," said a railway employee in New Delhi.

But even the bureaucracy is to be faulted. Decision-making is extremely tardy and implementation takes years on end. "Thus, if after all this brouhaha the government orders GPS on Indian trains, what should take just a year may well take five. Simply because the whole machinery moves so slowly," say the experts angrily.

An indifferent bureaucracy has hurt in other ways. With technology treated as a second cousin, the most brilliant technologists no longer care to join the railways. "The Research, Design and Standards Organisation, which is the railways' technical wing, no longer attracts the talent it used to in yesteryears," lament the experts.

As long as India continues to depend on humans to run the railways smoothly, who in turn are simply indifferent to their job which is protected by their unions and vote-seeking politicians, it is the travelling public that will continue to pay the price. Often with their lives.

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