The scene from the derailment in Muzaffarnagar
At the heart of Indian Railways’ track maintenance challenge is an unusual problem with its trackmen: overqualification. The job is of manual labour. It involves patrolling tracks day and night in all weather conditions while looking for faults in tracks and rectifying them with tools.
But the job has attracted educated youths over the years. Officers claim that the new, educated lot does not want to really to do the job as faithfully as their predecessors. Of the almost 2.2 lakh trackmen in India, the number of those with graduate and postgraduate degrees and diplomas has increased manifold, the railways says. “There are also MBAs,” said a Railway Board officer. “They just want a railway job. They don’t want the work,” he said.
That supervising them is a challenge was indicated in an audio-clip purportedly of conversation of an older gangman with a railway official after the Kalinga Utkal derailment. “Nowadays, the boys don’t want to do this job. They say, ‘give us jobs like sitting at a level crossing gate and the like. No one was listening to the Junior Engineer’,” he is heard saying.
“We keep getting frequent requests from them for transfers to other Group D jobs,” said a Northern Railway officer. The minimum qualification earlier for the post was schooling till Class VIII. Two months ago, it was made ITI certification. But aspirants are often commerce and science graduates and postgraduates.
