बेबाक · Editorial
ప్రయాణంలో పదిహేడు మంది మరణించారుః సాధారణ ప్రయాణికుడికి అపరిమిత కర్తవ్యం
సోలాపూర్ బావి నుండి మొరేనా రైల్వే ట్రాక్ వరకు, భయంకరమైన మృతుల సంఖ్య విధిని మాత్రమే కాకుండా, ప్రయాణంలో పౌరులను సురక్షితంగా ఉంచడం అసంపూర్ణమైన బాధ్యతను బహిర్గతం చేస్తుంది.
ఒక భయంకరమైన టోల్
ఇటీవలి పంపకాలలో, అదే నమూనా మహారాష్ట్ర, మధ్యప్రదేశ్, గుజాలో పునరావృతమైంది.
Not Accidents Alone
We are trained to call these events accidents, as if they fell from the sky. Some may indeed involve a driver's error, a sudden panic, or a chain of events no authority can wholly foresee. But the repetition matters. A pick-up vehicle carrying fifteen pilgrims, a halted train where a rumour spreads, a pilgrimage-season bus overturning with dozens injured: these are not abstractions. The Morena deaths are the most telling. Railway officials have said they are investigating why the rumour spread after the alarm chain was pulled. The victims did not die because of a confirmed fire in the source record; they died after fear pushed them into fatal danger. The tragedy was not only the rumour. It was a system that failed to reassure, direct and protect frightened passengers in time.
Steel-Manning Both Sides
Two honest readings contend here. The first holds that some risk is irreducible. A speeding car that rams an RTC bus near Lasjan, a driver who misjudges a road, a sudden rumour inside a crowded train — no state can legislate away every lapse of human judgment, and a republic that pretends otherwise breeds only cynicism. The Met department's forecast that the monsoon would advance in Maharashtra after June 18 is a reminder that seasonal conditions also complicate travel. The second reading is harder to dismiss: that the recurring victims are not random but predictable — pilgrims in vulnerable transport, women and children among the dead, commuters in a halted train without reliable information. When the dead cluster so tightly by circumstance — devotees bound for Dakor and Galteshwar, families on a stopped train — the cause is not fate distributed by chance. It is a duty distributed unevenly, and discharged late, if at all.
The Evidence on Paper
Consider what is already on record. In Kerala, school bus safety measures mandated by official directive — CCTV cameras, RFID-based student facilitation systems and GPS-enabled vehicle tracking — have, in The Hindu's reporting, yet to take off, even though some school managements had earlier revised transport charges to improve safety infrastructure. Parents paid more in the name of safety; the safety, according to that report, did not arrive. That is the documented heart of the crisis. The technology to monitor vehicles and reassure families exists, and in this case has been placed inside official directives and transport charges. What fails is the last step — installation, enforcement, audit. A directive left unimplemented is worse than none, for it manufactures the comfort of safety without the fact of it, and may charge the citizen twice: once at the counter, and once on the road.
The Verdict
The verdict is not against any government but against a habit of governance that treats road and rail safety as an occasion for condolence rather than construction. Seventeen deaths across these reports — in Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Jammu and Kashmir — are not an act of God to be mourned and forgotten. They are the measurable output of known vulnerabilities: unsafe road edges, vulnerable passenger movement, weak crowd communication, and safety systems that remain on paper. The state's first promise to the citizen is neither prosperity nor glory; it is that she will arrive. When a pilgrim cannot complete a journey and a child cannot survive the aftermath of a halted train at Morena, the most basic contract of the republic has been broken — not in some distant policy, but on the road and rail line home.
The Way Forward
The remedy is unglamorous and within reach. First, enforce what is already mandated: the GPS tracking, RFID systems and CCTV that Kerala's directives require should be installed and audited to a published deadline, with transport charges reviewed where promised safety was not delivered. Second, commission road-safety audits of the specific hazards these reports exposed — roadside wells, passenger movement in pick-up vehicles, and pilgrimage routes during peak congregations such as the Mahi Snan at Dakor and Galteshwar. Third, the railway administration should publish its Morena findings and strengthen clear passenger communication whenever an alarm chain is pulled, so a rumour does not become a death sentence. None of this needs grand rhetoric. It needs only that directives already issued, and charges already collected, finally translate into a citizen who reaches home.
వాగ్దానం చేయబడిన మరియు బిల్లు చేయబడిన కానీ ఎప్పుడూ పని చేయని భద్రతా వ్యవస్థ ఆలస్యం కాదు; ఇది రెండుసార్లు చెల్లించిన ద్రోహం-ఒకసారి ప్రయాణికుల రుసుము ద్వారా, మళ్ళీ ప్రయాణికుల ప్రమాదం ద్వారా.
At stake is whether Articles 14 and 19(1)(a), alongside institutions that enable universal democratic participation under Articles 324 and 326, protect ordinary travellers with equal safety and verified public information.
Traveller Safety Information Duty
Parliament for Railways and State transport authorities for road travel should create a binding Traveller Safety Information Duty requiring verified emergency announcements, staff-led passenger direction, and special crowd-risk protocols for halted trains and pilgrimage-season transport. Every serious transit incident should trigger a time-bound public safety report and RTI-disclosable compliance status on mandated measures such as GPS tracking, CCTV or other notified safeguards.
మీ రాజ్యాంగ హక్కులు
ఈ కథలో రాజ్యాంగం ఏమి హామీ ఇస్తుందిSuperintendence, direction and control of elections vests in an independent Election Commission of India.
ConstitutionalEvery citizen aged 18 or above has the right to vote, regardless of wealth, status, gender or education.
ConstitutionalEvery citizen has the right to freedom of speech and expression — including a free press and the right to know — subject only to the reasonable restrictions in Article 19(2).
Fundamental RightThe State shall not deny any person equality before the law or the equal protection of the laws. Like must be treated alike; the law cannot be arbitrary.
Fundamental RightWhat this editorial rests on
Drawn from our live multi-newsroom feed — read the reporting at source.
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