Indian Railways - Something for Indians to be proud of. Or is it?

With over Sixty-three-thousand (63,000) kilometres of track length and about 14,300 trains daily Indians should rightly be proud of their national Indian Railways. Sadly, the humongous Indian Railways is in the news more & more, not for accolades, but for accidents. This recent accident is but the latest in a series of train collisions, derailments etc.

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...Indians have become so used to the railway accidents that most accident news makes it to only inside pages of national dailies. ...
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This extract from an article in the The Washington Times completely summarises the world's opinion of the Indian Railways - a system where accidents are waiting to happen.

Despite operating for over 150 years, and with more than 55 years since Independence, why is the Indian Railways so backward in terms of improving rail technology. A common answer would be the size and vastness of the network. However, this can at best be considered an excuse for the accidents. It does not justify the accidents in any way and the Indian Railways really needs to spread basic technology such automatic signaling all over the network. It can be argued that the size of the networks requires huge amounts of finances to tackle the problem. But with an annual budget in excess of Rs. 13,000 crore (Rs. 13 billion) surely over time basic technology should have been extended to majority of the country.

Unfortunately, I believe that the biggest contributor to our Railways' backwardness is our democracy. Every Railway Minister's first task is to increase the trains to his/her state and provide more sops and benefits to that state. After all, it is his/her state's people who can elect him again to the Parliament the next time elections are held. And with rural population far outnumbering the urban population, it is the local issues, rather than the national issues, that dominate the election propaganda. With such a scenario, any Railway Minister has no "incentive" to improve the safety. After all, isn't it easier for him/her to tell his constituency that he has started so many new trains to that state rather than trying to show how safety has been improved.

In the end, the reasons behind the inaction on the part of the Indian Railways does not matter. When an accident occurs, the Opposition will clamour for the Railway Minister to resign, disregarding the fact that accidents occurred even when they were in power. The Government will make immediate announcements to offer compensations for the injured and for the next of kin of the deceased. Sometimes, announcements are also made on how safety will be improved. Everyone, including the media (& the Opposition) will forget about the accident a few days later and only when the next accident occurs will everyone remember the past. And even then, the focus will be on how the Opposition is requesting for the ouster of the incumbent Railway Minister. Has the country really become as callous as the article in The Washington Times claims?

Blogs - a history and a beginning

Blogs first started appearing on the Net towards the end of the last century but when measured purely in number of blogs available, it can be strongly argued that the floodgates opened around the last year of the millennium. This essay by Rebecca Blood way back in 2000 provides a glimpse into the history of blogging since the term was coined in 1997.

And as she has highlighted in her article, the huge boom in number of blogs has largely been contributed to by websites such as Blogger which provide even the most non-technical of people (and I would probably fall more easily into this category) the chance to setup a web blog that where they can give their own comments on any issue that they please. Or more specifically they can talk about anything they want at any time they please.

Even considering that easy availability of blogs started from the start of this century, it leaves me more than 5 years late. Over the last 2-3 years I have deliberated on starting a blog for myself and every time I would almost 'almost' set it up, I would have second thoughts - "would anyone actually read my blog?", "Is my writing good enough to be put up on the web?" or "would I be able to keep my interest in the blog?". But all that is, as they say, History. As per this article in the Business Week, the number of blogs on the Net now has gone upto an estimated 4.8 million. Well, late or not, here's blog#4,800,001 - Hidden Tallent - a quest to find my hidden tallent (if at all there is any :p)