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Showing posts from February, 2022

Address the root cause of rail accidents, avoid red herrings

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      Readers would recall that nine passengers died and nearly forty were injured following the derailment of several coaches of Up Bikaner-Guwahati Express on 13 th January at Domohani in Mainaguri area of West Bengal’s Jalpaiguri district. I covered some aspects of this accident in one of my blogs and a programme on the YouTube channel News Station in Hindi:   http://anindecisiveindian.blogspot.com/2022/01/accident-of-bikaner-guwahati-express.html   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92NniLP0jKA&t=536s   The derailment caused many of the twelve coaches which derailed, to capsize or climb over another coach. This accident had brought into focus once again, the issue of avoidable fatalities in an accident by switching over to a safer coach design on all faster services such that even if a derailment does occur, in spite of all the precautions and measures, the damage it causes to the affected coaches should be so controlled that it causes minimal casualties.   I

Rail Budget 2022: A talk show with Ghālib and Shakespeare

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  Anchor: Welcome Mr. Ghālib and Mr. Shakespeare to this session on Rail Budget 2022. Since I have no words to speak about your greatness, May I request you to introduce yourselves!   Ghālib : My introduction? Pūchhte haiñ vo ki Ghālib kaun hai koī    batlāo    ki   ham   batlā.eñ    kyā ( Although Ghālib, the passionate lover, is well-known, t he beloved teasingly asks as to who Ghālib is and the former now asks the gathering rhetorically to advise him on a possible reply)   Anchor: And you, sire, what’s your name and…   Shakespeare: Let me take a leaf out of my creation, the most moving love story of all time, when Juliet said to Romeo , “.. What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other word would smell as sweet. So Shakespeare would, were he not William called…”   Anchor: Sir, the PM GatiShakti framework, world-class modern infrastructure and logistics synergy among different modes of movement– both of people and goods. By the way gati means s