An avoidable tragedy

That at least 37 persons have perished in a train accident in a small town of Bihar will shock the nation. But such shock should not prevent it from looking at some aspects of the tragedy which suggest that it could have been avoided with a little care from both the passengers and the railway staff at the Dhamara railway station in Khagaria district. Whenever a train accident occurs, no matter where in India, the common tendency both among masses and the media is to recall how Lal Bahadur Shastri had resigned as Railway Minister owning moral responsibility for the train accident deep down South India.

That tendency is natural because Shastri had thereby set a precedent for the conduct of a railway minister following a train mishap. But resignation by the railway minister is not a substitute for provision of such facilities at railway stations as would avert accidents. For instance, in the present case, pilgrims were trying to cross tracks after alighting from another train when they were crushed by the speeding Rajya Rani Express which was on its way to Patna from Saharsa and which did not have a scheduled halt at Dhamara station.

According to video grabs of the station, people have no access to the train they mean to board, other than walking up to it; there is no elevated platform from which they could enter or get out of a train; they have necessarily to cross railway tracks to get to their train. The pilgrims were doing precisely that when they were crushed by the Express train. Therefore, the railway authorities need to explain why they did not provide such a basic facility at the station, and also why they did not tell the pilgrims crossing a railway track of the danger they were thereby courting.