For many, train journeys form some of the best childhood memories. But trains of today do little to gift moments that are memorable. The unhygienic compartments, the unappetising food offered in trains and the cleanliness, or the lack of it, at stations are off-putting, to put it mildly. The inability of the Indian Railways to stick to the time schedule is exasperating as well.
Whenever there is a major mishap on the tracks, shock, anger and aggression follow. The immediate response of the authorities is to reach out to the victims or their relatives with a compensation amount, and on very rare occasions, the minister for Railways is either pulled up or may ever offer resignation.
It took a tragedy which claimed the lives of scores of people on Friday evening to bring the focus back on an issue that is generally missed—unmanned and unfenced railway tracks right in the middle of densely populated areas, particularly on the outskirts of cities.
In Guru ki Nagari of Amritsar, people who were waiting for the climax of the Navaratri celebrations, of the burning of effigies of Ravana, Kumbhakaran and Meghnad, were mowed down by a train. The place turned into a horrific sight of crushed bodies, people wailing over the loss of their loved ones, and people running helter-skelter.
Railway authorities say they were not intimated about the celebrations or the people standing on the railway tracks even as the local agencies maintained that the celebrations have been happening on that very location for decades.
When railway lines are laid, there is generally no habitation or movement of people across them. However, developments result in encroachments in the form of unauthorised huts and temporary housings by the poor, on the land that belongs to the Railways.
According 'Down to Earth', a publication by the Centre for Science and Environment, the Railways is India's largest land owning agency. In 2016 the Railway Land Development Authority (RLDA) was set up to prevent encroachments and to generate revenue from unused Railways land.
Apparently, only half a per cent of the Railways land was found to be encroached upon in 2006. The minuscule figure is significant as these encroachments are around urban centres. In the national capital alone, 22 of the 70km of railway tracks are encroached upon, according to the National Green Tribunal.
The NGT came into the picture when a PIL was filed before it in 2014, to have the railway stations and tracks across India cleaned up. The petition mentioned plastic and human waste, and the NGT reasoned that the illegal occupants were littering and defecating on the tracks, and directed the Delhi government to relocate them.
One out of four slums in Delhi is on railway land, according to the National Sample Survey. Because these are unauthorised occupants, they are nobody's responsibility. They can get run over if they are putting themselves at risk, and cannot plead that nobody stopped them from organising the Dussehra celebrations at a dangerous location. And because there is no sanction to put up anything on the encroached space, the authorities cannot ask the those concerned to slow trains down or divert trains for a few hours when such celebrations are planned by the encroachers.
While it was a one-off tragedy that happened in Amritsar, it was one that was waiting to happen. What is surprising is that more such “accidents” did not happen. It does not help that whenever the Railways decides to demolish some of these encroachments—again, resettlements are nobody's responsibility—political intervention ensures that they continue living in the danger zones along the railway tracks.
