It would be a sacrilege to borrow Donald Trump’s phrase in describing the turn of events with people losing their homes to the Los Angeles wildfires, which he said was “interesting.” In a turn of events at home best described as bizarre, the year’s first bad train accident took place, costing around a dozen lives. The question remained as to who to blame if a rumour of a fire in a compartment led to passengers jumping off and on to the adjacent track on which a speeding express mowed them down.
Even as the Indian Railway is recovering from a wave of accidents in 2023 and 2024 that cost hundreds of lives, including the worst mishap in 2023 in which a train ran into a stationary foods train and a third train, an express speeding on a parallel track, ran into the carriages that had derailed and fallen in its path. A triple whammy should have woken up the nation and the railways to the concepts of safety of running trains.
The ill-fated passengers of the Lucknow-Mumbai Pushpak Express must curse their ill fortune for having panicked when hearing a rumour of a fire in the compartment that may have been caused by mechanical problems in the running stock. It is reported the train halted on the emergency chain being pulled and some passengers had the worst of it as they crossed the ground to the adjacent track.
Tragic as the fate of the passengers who died or were injured was, it is time to stop and think whether what they did in panic was necessary. According to reports, the rumour may have spread from a pantry car tea seller and spread quicker than a wildfire by a couple of passengers. Maybe, it is time India stepped up into the modern age in protecting the lives of its citizens by building genuine fire alarms in compartments with sprinklers to help deal with it.
As many as 29 consequential accidents last year caused 17 deaths and injuries to 81. The message from each was that safety issues could be better handled. But lackadaisical attitude to safety is an established Indian trait. And it is not going to change regardless of who is in charge. Simply put — this is us when it comes to public safety, including in jumping off trains and running helter-skelter in panic even after the train had stopped.
