The insensitivity of Yogi Adityanath’s admonition of a people distraught over the death of children in a school bus-train collision in Kushinagar (UP) does in some way reflect a deeper malaise ~ the low priority accorded to safety on both the railway and the roads.

Thirteen children lost their lives, but the protest by their families could not be stomached by the chief minister who told them to stop their nautanki. Even conceding that the bus driver was most likely to have been at fault this time around ~ some kids in the bus say he was driving with earphones of his cell-phone plugged in and ignored warnings ~ the railway minister did only marginally better than the Yogi.

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For his accelerated programme for eliminating unmanned level crossings actually falls short of his initial, much-trumpeted, scheme announced when he first stood on the footplate at Rail Bhawan. Unmanned level crossings are as old as the Indian Railway itself, and despite frequent claims of doing away with them ~ by consecutive railway ministers ~ the present tally stands at 5,792, and it will not be before March 2020 that they will remedied: provided Piyush Goyal (or his successor) lives up to promise.

There is little reason for the common man to be impressed by claims that there has been a decline in the number of accidents, and that several such crossings have been replaced ~ try selling that line to the folk at Kushinagar who lost their children. Or that level-crossings fall into different categories determined by the frequency of trains running on the particular section, and that the busiest ones have been upgraded. The lowest category pertains to the least-used lines, in remote areas bypassed by the rich and famous.

Actually the railway ministry is not entirely to blame, had there been more effective coordination with the local authorities the cancer might have been contained some years back. It is, however, conceded that no system is foolproof: human negligence can undo all methods and drills, accidents can, at best, be minimised.

The relevant query is whether adequate efforts are being made to promote safety down the line. It would take a very bold or very brazen minister or chairman of the Railway Board to honestly answer that query in the affirmative. To again draw attention to the difference in financial/technology backing between the Mumbai-Ahmedabad “bullet train” project would be very uncharitable, but it is fair to ask if the same network can display such vastly different operating parameters?

After all, the traveller on a slow-passenger on a branch line is paying what to him is money as hard earned as those using the executive class on luxury trains. Piyush Goyal and Ashwani Lohani are morally bound to keep political priorities in their due place and cater to the lowest-paying passenger ~ he too is a citizen, a voter, a human being.