Railway safety — listen to the voices from below
Introduction:
- A serious accident is the single thing that focuses the entire nation’s attention on the Indian Railways. The tragic triple train collision that happened on June 2 at the Bahanaga Bazar railway station near Balasore in Odisha, claiming over 280 lives, elicited all the expected reactions from various quarters, including explanations of how the accident happened, corrective actions to prevent accidents in the future, and comparisons with foreign railway systems. In essence, there is a strong sense of déjà vu.
Information flow and security:
- The distribution of information regarding risky activities or situations in real time is relevant here.
- Contrary to many other organisations or industries where the activities or operations are more or less concentrated in a small area, the Railways’ activities are geographically dispersed over a large area and involve a variety of disciplines (departments) that must work in close coordination in real time to ensure the smooth and safe operation of trains.
- In an effort to standardise the processes as much as possible to ensure uniformity in the compliance with rules and regulations and safety in operations, numerous codes and guidelines have been established over the years for various departments.
Top-down approach:
- Since the beginning of the nation’s railways, management has employed periodic field inspections by authorities at various levels as one of the principal methods to ensure adherence to specified procedures and workmanship standards.
- Although this system has mostly stood the test of time throughout the years, it does have several shortcomings, particularly in terms of railway safety.
- By definition, the “top-down” approach places the burden of spotting departures from the norm on the higher ups.
- The situation becomes a real-life “cops and robbers” one where the higher authority harbours mistrust and suspicion for the workers who perform cutting-edge work, while the lower level staff adopts a “catch me if you can” approach.
- It is in favour of window dressing and tucking problems under the rug. Honesty and transparency generally suffer in such a situation.
- By identifying and resolving such aberrations as soon as possible, many potentially dangerous situations can be kept from developing into major accidents.
- Managers can frequently avert a major calamity by just being aware of the problems in real time, even though there may not always be a fix.
Confidential Incident Reporting and Analysis System (CIRAS):
- The technology was developed by one of the British universities approximately thirty years ago for use on the British Railways in the middle of the 1990s.
- The basic tenet is to encourage the publication of unvarnished thoughts while preserving the privacy of the reporter and enjoining the lower staff to point out contradictions in real-time.
- The method successfully flips the top-down inspection approach on its head. Actually, this serves as an example of genuine staff empowerment.
- Given the rapid advancements in communications and information technology since CIRAS was founded more than three decades ago, the deployment of a comparable reporting system on the Indian Railways shouldn’t be difficult.
- But a warning must be given anyway. In addition to the necessary physical infrastructure, the introduction of a CIRAS-like reporting system necessitates a radical change in how management views field personnel at all levels, beginning with the top.
- The traditional approach of blaming and punishing must give way to a more modern idea of a shared commitment to safety at all levels.
- The objective should be to correct, not to punish. If you hear the voices below, take action. Implementing this change is difficult.
Moving forward:
- There may need to be a serious second thought about the recently established Indian Railways Management Service (IRMS) programme, which is bound to destroy any loyalty and sense of “ownership” that exists towards a particular discipline (department) among the management cadre.
- Maybe it’s time to return to the earlier setup, where a full-time Cabinet Minister oversaw the Railways.
- Unprecedented amounts of investment must receive the highest level of policy-making’s full attention at a time when the organisation is going through a challenging period of transformation among many external challenges.
