 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. On Friday in a train accident involving three trains led to the death of around 300 people and 900 people are reportedly injured. Naturally the questions are going to be asked about what went wrong while the government has set up a probe to examine the reasons. Right now the focus is on rescue and relief of all the people who are caught in that accident and also to help the families find those of their family members who were on those trains. Joining us today is Mr. Sita Ramya Churi, senior leader of the CPIM. He has been in parliamentary committees looking at the railways and examining their role. And he's going to tell us the direction that the government probe as well as the systemic issues that arise with the railways over the years. Mr. Churi, thank you very much for joining us. Now after a very serious tragedy of the scale that has happened in Orisha, questions are bound to be raised about what went wrong. I know that the government has instituted a probe. But you have covered the railways for a long time. You have tracked its progress over the decades. What are the systemic issues which need to be highlighted at this point? Well, there are many systemic issues that have been ignored for many, many years. And that is the reason for all these accidents that are occurring. In my opinion, the issue of railway safety is something as far as we are concerned the most paramount. Railways are something that keeps our country united. I mean, it's the railways and the Postal Department. It's the Dakhia and the Gangmen. These are the two that have kept India united and integrated. Now the moment you start privatizing them, I mean, it has its own revocations. The Gangmen's daily walking routes, checking every bolt on the track, every single bolt is checked whether it is in place or not. Because anyone trying to sabotage, you know our railway lines, how they are unprotected. I mean, that Gangmen is the most crucial person. Now the amount of distance he had to cover in a day. In order to save money, you double it. So how will he actually check? It will only be hitting it and seeing if the sound is right. But you are doubling people's walk in the... I mean, you are doubling the work, increasing the workload and thereby reducing the efficiency. And even there, there is a dearth of Gangmen. Your signaling systems have been under scrutiny and question mark for a long time, which is what this accident apparently is also leading up to the same. Signaling failure, a managed signal failure or a fault of whatever it is, that we will have to wait and see what the probe will say. But the fact is that from 2017, there has been a task force that was appointed by the railways and its report is in public domain. And they had warned very seriously that there is an urgent, urgent necessity to address the issue of track renewals. And also the issue of your... No, there is a signal in the, you know, the systems, etc. Generally talking in terms of saying that many of these issues connected with railway safety need to be urgently addressed. That has not been done. Instead, what has happened? The recommendation was address track renewals. Right. And in the 2022 budget, 14% has been reduced in allocation for track renewals. But the government says that we are increasing the budget, we are increasing not just the budget but the capital expenditure. So where does the money go? That is what the government has to answer. Whether that is also accounted for with all the great publicity, inauguration drives. How much is being spent on that, rather than spending on the actual infrastructure connected with railway safety? Right. Now if instead of the entire, you see the question is railways have also been reduced in order to be a sort of a publicity area. They are flagging off trains. Yes. It becomes the main occupation. Right, right. No, no. If that money is accounted for saying, naturally the budget will increase. The more the inaugurations you do, the more the money you spend. So the budget can go there. So the question is where is that money going? Is it going into high speed trains? Is that the direction we are moving in? Yeah. I mean these trains that you already have, Shatabdi and Rajbani. Yes. You are one day Bharat, so called high speed train. It does not match that speed yet. Absolutely. So it is not really a high speed train. You already have these high speed trains. All this great propaganda blitz about bullet trains and all that. Now can your track sustain that speed? When your track renewals are under question for decades, you have to strengthen your tracks. Can you sustain that sort of a load and that sort of a speed? You cannot unless you renew your tracks. No. For that you are not allocating money. In fact you are reducing the allocations. So when it comes to hiring for the railways, now you have a very large number of skilled people who work here. They are engineers and then there are people who have particular tasks like the gang when you said, those watch and man, the signals and so on. One of the concerns is that the government will turn around and say that everything is automated and so we don't need these 3 lakh people who, you know, those posts which are vacant. How do you explain this? What is the reason to not hire people? It is cutting costs. As simple as that. The government wants to cut costs and instead outsource it to private companies. Okay. 3.12 lakh posts lying vacant in the railways. And that is what? Non-gazeted posts. Which means these are the people who actually do the groundwork. That's right. The gangmen which we already mentioned. Yes. And all those who actually physically man all your signal points. And that is where the safety is all, that is where the safety is all connected with. Whether your bolts are in place on the track. If one of them is loose, the train derails. Whether the signaling systems are working all right. Like now the speculation about this gruesome accident is that the signal was given to travel on the main line. But it was withdrawn and suddenly the Coromandel Express went on to the loop line. The loop line is the line where many trains are stationary. Right. Also mostly good trains. Okay. So there is now, again speculation all this. Only a proper inquiry will prove what's happened. That it went and crashed into one stationary train derailed. And then that crashed into the third train coming in. And mayhem happened. And this sort of overcrowdedness in the Coromandel Express. It's actually heart-rending. The passengers who reserve their seats in the reserve compartments. They have sent out videos of complaints to the minister. Before the accident. Before, just before the accident. Asked maybe over minutes before the accident. Saying that this is the state of this bogey. 72 people have put in their reservation. There are more than 200 travelling in that. Today when you want to identify who is dead. Your record only gives you 72 names. Yes. What about the rest? Who are they? And it's inhuman. That sort of thing. So we have two things going on at the same time. On the one hand there is this whole conversation from the government side about high-speed travel, luxury travel, better quality amenities. And then you have the reality of hundreds of people who cannot, who need to travel urgently or otherwise. Go home. School holidays are going on. And they have no space. So what will it take to actually make it very apparent to everybody who uses the railways that this is an issue? You see the Indian railways was one thing that made everybody uniform. From your poorest of the person. Who could travel in undeserved compartment. To the richest who could travel in AC first class etc. On the same train. On the same train. Yes. So you had that egalitarian this thing on. So now what have you done? You are eliminating all these passenger trains which cater to the poor and instead focusing on your high-speed trains which the poor cannot access. They are too expensive. So that is it. In Indian railways also you are creating two Indians. Everywhere else you are doing it. But in Indian railways also which so far has not been subjected to that sort of an insult. So now the net result is you see railways is the lifeline for crores of Indians. They get on to their passenger, local passenger train. Get off some place, sell their milk, sell their vegetables, sell their things etc. Come back on the train and that's how their lives and they sustain. Crores and crores of people. Now you deny them that. Then this is what happens in reserve compartments. They will come and occupy. Then what? It will be a law and order situation. That's what you'll create. So please focus on providing facilities for people to travel rather than on very publicity-oriented high-speed trains which only the rich can access. And you're also suggesting that in fact once the tragedy is right now in a very heightened state of emotional because of the 300 people who died. But once all this calms down a little, you're saying that even the numbers of the people who have died and who have been injured we may perhaps never know. Never. Never. That is the unfortunate and that is the most inhuman part of it. There are photographs that have been sent to me from Balasur. Of dead bodies piled up in school buildings. Now who they are, whose relatives would come and own the apartment? Whom do you inform? Unless the relatives themselves, they know that so and so their family was travelling in the train. Yes. They come to Balasur looking for the person. Otherwise it's impossible. As I told you every the sleeper compartment has 72 births. You only have records for these 72. The other 200 you don't know. And from all the videos that were sent by the passengers as complaints to the real minister. Minutes before the accident. Saying that what is this? What are you doing? Why did we reserve our seats? Those videos show you that the sort of people that are there are clearly migrant workers. The poorest of the poor. From the comments narrative also sometimes it feels like they have a lot to do. They have the signaling to take care of the track to take care of new trains to launch, etc. Is all of this beyond India? Of course not. We had all of this being done most efficiently and trains ran and I would say ran on time earlier and when you were known what to call mechanization, computerization, etc. Right. In our youth when we used to do the student movement and go by you know work class. Those days there was a third class and third class sleeper and there would be only a wooden sleeper. Right. There was no cushion at all you know which is there now and there you would find the ticket collector coming and suppose I extend my journey from one station to another. He would make a receipt with three copies. Give me one. Okay. Send one to the railways and send one to the audit. Right. And all this work and work very well I mean we all grew up on that. I mean so it's but the system if you try to actually distort it which is what is happening now. Distort in what way? That you ship the priorities. You see this is not your concern now. It is not your concern to provide service to people. Your concern is to provide service to the rich who can afford it and the publicity involved in it. Bullet trains, high speed trains, better facilities, etc. Who will access them except for the one percent of Indian population which is large anyway. It appears so but if that this priority is shifted that is what will happen. Do you think that this government is actually going to become a little more sensitive after a tragedy of this scale or does it have another agenda? Different plans for the railways than what you and I are talking about. You see unfortunately right now when we are discussing the priority should be on providing relief and ensuring that the debt toll doesn't rise further by providing and therefore to provide adequate and proper medical attention to the injured. Now that is what the focus should be. And then you set in motion a proper independent inquiry which will establish and I am sure that inquiry will re-endorse what the task force has talked about. Track renewals, you know your signaling systems, your technological upgradation of various things that are involved in the operations. No and that is where the focus must be. Now you have this one day by the train with an aerodynamic engine. Now our designs are such that you have logs at the end of the track in everything where the train comes and stops. So the drivers are used to a point where the train stops. Now if the train stops at that point, your one day by the engine goes and bangs into their rods. Every one of these engines is damaged today. Because you were doing it for publicity not for actual operational efficiency. And you are also not working towards benefitting or helping those who are actually the biggest users of the railways. That is right. Which is working people. And it is, I mean as I said, I mean it is the gangmen and the olden days the Dhakaia who actually kept this country integrated. I mean you would have the postman running from one village to another village to deliver the letter. And the gangmen inspecting every bolt and every connection on the rail track. That is right. Now if you say that you doubted, you privatize it, I will give it to all sources. So now Indian Postal Department has gone, you have to use your courier service. And instead of a 5 rupee postal stamp, you spend 40 rupees to send a letter. So I mean whom are you catering to? That is the question. That is the question and this government is increasingly not only elitist oriented but there is a very very dangerous corporate communal nexus that is emerged. But the real minister, in fact other ministers in this government have said that they are not privatizing the railways. They are monetizing. Is there a difference? That is all gimmickery for you. What do you mean monetizing? Beats me. The railways has huge lands. They want to give those lands on lease to private payers. So they will build these fancy stations. Yes. Like the malls that you have. I mean they are with malls and cinema halls and things like that and everything else in the station. And the focus is on providing those facilities and not on improving the conditions of the track so that the railways can be more efficient. So what is this monetizing about? Monetizing is actually selling off your railway land to private players to maximize their profits. What else is it but privatization? Will it not help the railways itself? Nothing. Where does the revenue come from? The revenue doesn't go to the railways. To sum up, Mr. Ichuri, are you saying that this accident, not this one particular, but accidents in general are preventable if the government takes the right means at the right time? Absolutely. What I am saying is not only accidents preventable, if the government's priority is focused on railways safety not on publicity, given free. A lot of things can improve. But we have Kavach now, the security system. Indigenous security system. Yes, that's right. I mean you also have Indigenous rail collision, anti-collision system. That's right. That is what the... But why are they not being deployed then? But right now I think the priority in the focus should be human. Please, for heaven's sake, the problem that has to be addressed is actually the people who have unfortunately lost their lives. More importantly, people who have injured, who should not lose their lives. Focus on that. While the inquiry goes on, yes, we will come to those issues later. But right now this is the priority that the government must address. As Mr Yajuri just told us, the immediate relief and rescue should lead to an extensive probe into the reasons for the tragedy and the tragedy will not be completely examined unless the systemic issues have been studied. Thank you very much for joining us.