As many as 13 bogies, and the engine, of the Delhi-bound Kalka Mail flew off the tracks on the Allahabad-Kanpur section on Sunday.

It appears the accident occurred when emergency brakes were sought to be applied. At last count 68 passengers had lost their lives and about 200 were injured.

No possible cause for the derailment, including sabotage, can be ruled out for now. But no matter where the inquiry leads, it is reasonable to suggest that the Indian Railways have been among our least supervised national assets.

It is a shame that this is the case. Our railways, after all, offer the most extensive network of trains in the world and are used mainly by ordinary people, for whom it is the cheapest and most convenient means of long-distance transportation, whether of passengers or goods.

Even if the Kalka Mail derailment is proved to be the handiwork of saboteurs, the railway administration cannot wish away its responsibilities. It is an obligation for it to ensure that the nation’s transportation lifeline is better looked after even from the security point of view. It does need to be considered that desperadoes gain extra propaganda points when they are able to hit important trains such as the Kalka Mail, which is among the oldest and most prestigious in the railways’ stable.

However, looking at probable causes of rail accidents in India, it is not unlikely that safety and maintenance shortcomings will top the chart, although “human failure” is usually the first cause that officialdom thinks of. But realistically speaking, top officials ought to be concentrating on systemic causes. The figures of deaths due to rail accidents have climbed alarmingly in recent times.

It appears that in the past decade, the railways have failed to meet their own corporate safety plan targets. The Comptroller and Auditor-General has pointed to failures in the meeting of goals in key areas such as the modernising of signalling equipment, installation of the anti-collision devices, maintenance of assets and the filling of safety-related vacancies at all levels.

According to the CAG, there was shortage of safety staff in almost all sections in all 16 railway zones. It appears that the key post of member (traffic) on the Railway Board has not been filled for over a year, while general managers in several zones have not been appointed. These top-level personnel oversee the flow of traffic in all directions and in handling train operations overall.

This is a disturbing state of affairs, which attests to systemic decay, not growth. The adding of more trains on nearly every route, mainly to suit the whims or political compulsions of railway ministers, and raising their speed without commensurate upgrading of tracks and other equipment needed to bear the extra load, cannot obscure the deficiencies which are certain to lead to outcomes that are fatal.

In fact, if things remain the way they are, more accidents are waiting to happen. The railways are a departmentally run undertaking of the Government of India, and are led by a Cabinet minister at the Centre. In recent years, however, the political appointee has been an absentee owner of the fief, as is graphically illustrated by the case of Mamata Banerjee, who had no time to give to her charge as she was concentrating on wresting control of Kolkata’s Writers’ Buildings.

Before her, Lalu Prasad Yadav sought to build a reputation for himself as a manager by augmenting railway revenues, but generally left railway safety to chance, ushering in neither consolidation nor innovation.