An Indecisive Indian

  The euphoria that we at Integral Coach factory, Chennai (ICF) lived through on the day of the unveiling of Train 18, on the day it breached the 180 km/h speed in tests with all parameters well within the safe limits and on the day it was launched in commercial service by the PM was so sublime that at is almost untellable. Team ICF had delivered the first modern train entirely of Indian origin from concept to design to engineering to manufacture at much less than half the cost of import. We had gradually realized that ICF was doing something great but the way the country loved the complete  Make in India  concept of the project, the way they celebrated it as something of their own and the phenomenal coverage it got was beyond our imagination. It made every ICF member feel very happy, proud and also grateful to each and every member of the team, everyone who supported it and even those who opposed it because they all had some contribution in this success. Imagine, it was just a train.

You all know about the accident of Up Bikaner-Guwahati Express 13 th January near Jalpaiguri in which nine passengers died and scores were injured as the locomotive and twelve coaches capsized or climbed over another coach. What stood out was:  Although the safety record of Indian Railways (IR) has improved in recent years, thanks to greater stress on maintenance of infrastructure, it still faced criticism as the number of fatalities and serious injuries would have been zero had LHB coaches been in use on the train. Successive accidents have shown that whenever ICF type coaches are involved in derailment at high speeds, coaches climb and capsize causing heavy casualties whereas similar accidents with LHB coaches have practically no casualties and certainly no fatalities. The cause of the accident is a traction motor of the locomotive falling down, something which is rather bizarre as this equipment is secured very strongly. It indicates a serious manufacturing defect compounded by

  Indian Railways (IR) is frequently in the news for something good or something bad. For example, its freight loading is going up at   a rate which would translate into highest cumulative YoY incremental loading ever. One can say that it is not good enough given that Covid had affected things much worse in the last fiscal, but good it certainly is. It can also face brickbats for accidents, as it indeed has over the years, but its safety record in recent years has definitely improved. It comes for criticism for slow pace of large projects. So far so good.   Unfortunately, of late, IR is also in the news for unadulterated hype, with insipid, gullible, slothful and perhaps, venal Press and Media. I am talking of the so-called main-line media, not the ubiquitous on-line channels and YouTubers who, of course, are unmatched in spreading misinformation and building up inane announcements and fake observations into sensational news. Some hype is the order of the day but then going hyper