The Elphinstone Stampede – Whose Fault Is It Anyway?

Are you pissed off? No? You should be. I know I am. There are few times in my life that I’ve been so angered, and yet felt a sense of helplessness. The more I read about what happened earlier today at Elphinstone/Prabhadevi, the more exasperated I get. Inevitably, over the course of the next few days, the same story will follow – a few tweets condemning the incident, a few people expressing their heartfelt sorrow and a government that will promise to fix the bridge in record time. But what difference will it make now? The damage is already done. Lives have already been lost. And the likelihood that lightning will strike in the same place again is near nil.

The way I see it, at this point in time, there are two reactions you should humanely have – either you should realise how fragile life is and how everything can end on one random day due to a freak incident, or you should get irritated that something so easily avoidable still happened. If this made your blood boil as much as it did mine, you’ve probably got two questions on your mind – who is to blame? It’s a valid question and I’ll touch upon it, but it’s not the question I care about today. The question I’m looking to answer is – how do we ensure this never happens again? And by that I mean, how do we mitigate the number of disasters and their effect on the city?

Whose fault is anyway?

I would generally go on a rant about how our local representatives are absolutely useless and oblivious to our problems but this time I need to give credit where credit is due. Member of Parliament from South Mumbai, Arvind Sawant actually did write a letter to the former Railway Minister expressing his concern over repairs on the bridge. The real question is – what was the outcome of that letter? Did the letter ensure that the work happened, or the incident was averted? According to an official on TV, they had already put out a tender. In my opinion, this was already too little, too late. Infrastructure is something that needs to constantly be upgraded and our city’s infrastructure is acutely obsolete. In fact, the tender was only put out because people were aware that this was a tragedy waiting to happen. Over the past three years, the Railway Minister received no less than 100 tweets asking him to fix the bridge. And what happened eventually? A tender was put out but not acted upon. As per a report by IndiaSpend, the number of passengers on Mumbai locals has gone up by about 10 times in the last 60 years while the number of trains has only increased by about 4 times. But, I don’t need to quote numbers to any person who has travelled by a Mumbai local during rush hour traffic. Especially, if you’ve ever seen people boarding a Virar fast from Dadar in the evening.

The fact of the matter is that the railway infrastructure for our city is, to put it crudely, trash. Why is this so? It’s most likely because the stations in Mumbai are just a speck on the map for the Railway Ministry. There are a total number of 8,000-8,500 train stations in the entire country. Of these, 81 are located in Mumbai. Should we really be surprised if the Railway Minister really doesn’t give a shit about the infrastructure if the rest of railways are fine? I mean, if their votes aren’t coming from Mumbai, and assume for a second that the city of Mumbai wasn’t saffron i.e. controlled by the same coalition present at the state and central level, would anyone in the central government really have a strong incentive to develop the infrastructure here? The answer should be a resounding no. They don’t have the incentive because they aren’t elected from Mumbai. Thus, they aren’t really answerable to the people of Mumbai. Do you want more proof of this? Apparently, approximately 9 people die on the tracks of Mumbai every single day, if you take the average over the last 10 years (Source: IndiaSpend). Has anyone even raised the issue; let along correct it.

What’s the solution then?

So the Railway Minister clearly doesn’t have the incentive to care about us. Well, that’s okay. At least we have a strong state government that will take care of us, right? Guess again.

In the wake of disaster in Mumbai, the response is almost always the same — “we will fix the problems”, followed by some grandiose chest-thumping. Remember when the Chief Minister called into helplines to see if they were functioning, and they all answered and did their job during the flood? Mirror Now reporter Faye D’Souza’s experience wasn’t quite the same, was it? It all makes for good publicity but what really happened at the end of it all? Do they actually get down to fixing the problem? I don’t need any data to back me up when I say, they probably fix that particular problem, like a manhole or something but never really get down to actually solving the problems of the future.

Why do you think that is? Perhaps, because they’re all just selfish people and we need to elect better representatives? Or perhaps, because out of the state’s 288 elected representatives, only 36 are from Mumbai (not to mention the unelected MLCs, but that’s a whole other issue). If you think the problem is selfishness/incompetence, good luck finding selfless and competent people in politics that are ready to die for you. Hit me up when you’re a 100 and realise that ain’t happening.

The reason we keep navigating disaster and commending the resilience of the city and the #SpiritOfMumbai is that, well, we’ve learnt to adjust to the fact that we’re going to be ignored. But that doesn’t mean that we need to be ignored? The problem is, we don’t have enough representatives of the city in the state or centre to be taken seriously. Even though we constitute more than a percentage of the population of the country, not to mention the skewered tax amounts we give this country, we aren’t well enough represented at either of these levels.

So then we should just petition to increase our representation at these levels? Well, we could do that but then, where does the buck really stop? Today, we don’t know whether to blame the current or former Railway Minister or the state government. And that’s the problem. We have the anger within us, but we don’t know where to vent, who to vent to and who to put pressure on. In addition to being the highest taxpayers in the country, we also probably top the charts when it comes to being politically ignorant. And therein lies our greatest weakness. So why not try and make it simple for ourselves? We know we have the energy and anger to vent, we know we need a single person to lash out, and we know that we can’t tell the difference between issues of the state, centre and municipal level.

So here is my radical suggestion – create an empowered mayoral office, one that is elected not through the parliamentary system but by means of a presidential system. What’s a presidential system? In a parliamentary system, you elect representatives who then choose an elective head amongst themselves. You might remember that no one really elected the current Chief Minister – he was chosen by the BJP to become the Chief Minister. This isn’t to say our current Chief Minister is inept, he has done some amazing work in the state. However, to have a system structured as it is now, can lead to the appointment of inept leaders. In a presidential system, the person elected is directly chosen by the people, and thus his fealty lies with the people. So let’s choose this mayor, let’s make him executively responsible for not only everything the BMC does, but also for everything in the city including law and order, all roads including highways leading into the city, dispersal of schemes and, last but not least, the local railway transport under the city’s charge. Unequivocally, it makes no sense that a transport system used largely by the residents of one city should be controlled by some random dude who can belong to literally any state and has no accountability to those people.

In the case of a directly elected mayor, if there is an incident of flooding again, you know whose neck is on the line. In cases like this, his neck is on the line once again. In cases of a building collapse, he’s going to politically collapse. The fact that the direct accountability of the entire city rests on his shoulders, will be enough to propel the person to actually make the necessary changes to govern the city in the best manner. Being a person living and elected exclusively by the residents of the city will ensure that his prime focus is to work for the people of the city.

And now, on a lighter vein, to debunk all the theories that I’ve seen put forward. Some seem sound in their rationale; others border on the ludicrous. But they all will be equally mocked. Some have come from seasoned politicians who should know better; most have come from seasoned comedians who believe they know better.

Argument #1: The Railway Minister should resign for this

At the surface, this seems like a rational response. The bridge comes under the Railway Ministry and as the elected representative charged with running the Ministry; the buck should stop at him. However, I implore you to think back just a little. Just last month, there was a change in the Railway Minister following a number of derailments across the country. He was criticized for not paying heed to the safety of passengers. Fast forward a month later, and we’re back at square one. And what is likely to happen if we change this one as well? Another minister, another incident, another change. This can keep going on and on. And the list of incidents can be endless as well – today it was a problem of safety, tomorrow the food on railways is shit, day after someone wakes up and realises that the toilets aboard trains have been disgusting, to say the least, for the past half a century. Next thing you know, we’re expecting the Railway Minister to personally be cleaning the shitter at every station.

My limited point is, while the Railway Minister should be culpable, the fault truly lies in the structure of the system. Changing the Railway Minister may quell our thirst for blood but it won’t go beyond that to actually truly change anything. Putting it bluntly, the Railway Minister has no real incentive to focus on the infrastructure of any particular place. There are a total of 8,500+ railway stations across India. Of these, only 81 stations lie in the vicinity of Mumbai. Now, assume for a second that the Railway Minister was elected from Bihar and he wins his votes from Bihar. If he wants to remain in power, and build his influence in this area, he’ll focus on the rail infrastructure over there first. The infrastructure for a city like Mumbai, where people are notoriously well known for adjusting and having a ‘chalta hai’ attitude, is likely to be his last priority.

Here’s a crazy thought – why not shift the administration of the local railway lines to the city? At the end of the day, the people using the locals are well, locals. The people administering them should be answerable only to those people. Shifting the administration to the city definitely won’t solve the problems overnight. In fact, I’m sure a lot of you are thinking of how useless the BMC is and wondering – well, no. My point is if you move the infrastructure under an elected head who has the right incentives to work his ass off on the infrastructure, - maybe, just maybe – he might actually end up working for the people.

Argument #2: Chief Minister must resign
Because if you can’t get the Railway Minister to resign, there is always the Chief Minister. Putting something like this up just proves that you don’t care that things get better. You don’t care if the guy is actually in-charge of the railway stations or not (FYI: he isn’t). All you need is someone to resign. If that’s your point of view, no arguments from me. I’m with you. Let’s get every bloody person in this country to resign!

Argument #3: The Government has the time to change names of stations but doesn’t have time to look at the infrastructure
Because every single employee of the Government does nothing except sit and rename stations, roads, cities and the like, every single day. There are 13.3 lakh employees of the Railway and every single one of them does nothing but think of creative names to give stations, ALL. DAY. LONG.

To be honest, I was surprised to find this argument coming from well-educated professionals and not satirical news sites like Faking News. It’s almost as if these people don’t believe that an organisation can perform more than one function at a time.

Argument #4: The Government can spend Rs 3,600 crore for Shivaji statue, and money on a bullet train but no money for railway infrastructure

Of the arguments that I came across, this seemed to be the most well thought-out, obvious and populist argument. It makes so much common sense, that I’m not even going to mock it… too much. Here is, actually, where we see the ill-effects of political illiteracy.

People seem to believe that there is just one Government, and it works happily, magically and in complete synchronisation. It doesn’t. The money from the Shivaji statue comes from one place, the money for railway infrastructure, from another. I can guarantee you that the Railway Ministry is not providing money to, or in any other way, getting involved in the construction of the Shivaji statue. In last year’s railway they didn’t just decide – let’s mess with everyone and make a Shivaji statue in the middle of the sea. To put it simply and non-sardonically, the money for the Shivaji statue comes from the State Government and the money for infrastructure comes from the railway ministry. I’m not even going to get into the cultural aspect of whether or not they should spend this amount of money. All I’m saying is that the funding mechanism isn’t that simple. If you really want to attack the state government on a blatant waste of money, albeit much smaller sum, target them for having Marathi ads on an all-English radio channel! It’s not only wasteful but vexing.

Now, coming to the bullet train, I’ll explain this with an analogy of how funding works - I was once given money by Nike to be their brand ambassador. They told me the money was to be used for a particular pair of shoes they wanted me to promote. I took the money and decided instead to take my century-old sneakers to the local mocha, and make into something that could possibly be wearable. For some reason, Nike was pissed off with me. I wonder why…

All in all, the point I’m trying to make is – the money going towards the Shivaji statue was never going to be spent on railway infrastructure. It could have been spent on developing economically sustainable agriculture, but statues to great leaders are clearly the need of the hour. The money for the bullet train would never have come into the country if it wasn’t going to be used for a bullet train. Again, not wading into the “can we afford the bullet train but” debate.

[Sharang Shah is currently a Senior Associate at Haqdarshak Empowerment Solutions, a social enterprise working towards helping citizens to discover, apply for and benefit from government schemes. He has previously worked with a policy think-tank, on a political campaign, and has done the LAMP Fellowship during which he assisted a Member of Parliament for a year.]

Feature image courtesy of Ganesh Shirsekar & The Indian Express