The derailment of two trains at Harda, in Madhya Pradesh, on Tuesday night has taken the lives of 30 people. Whilst the routine enquiry has been ordered into the cause of the devastating accidents when the Janata Express and the Kamayani Express were crossing the bridge over the swollen Machak river near Harda, the immediate reason given by Railway Board chairman A.K. Mittal is that a sudden flow of water onto the tracks, possibly because a dam burst nearby, caused the two trains to derail. According to reports, the black cotton soil absorbs the water and so the earth under the flooded tracks just gave way. Pictures on TV news channels showed huge craters beneath where the rails once lay, raising doubts of whether this could happen in a minutes. Nine minutes earlier, another train had crossed safely.
Though the minister of state for railways said it was an act of nature many questions are being asked, one of them being whether the tragedy was manmade. Indian Railways does not have a good track record with regard to maintenance. Nothing much seems to have changed on this score since the new government came in; there has been more talk of wi-fi and five-star packaged food and other such amenities. Some of the people interviewed at the site said the government focuses only on trains like the Shatabdi and Rajdhani, patronised by the well-off, and “leaves the others to God”. If there is any truth in this, the rail minister should change this perception. Till then we have to wait to know, especially about when these particular tracks were last examined.
