Case Study

Recently, India has experienced one of the worst train accidents in Odisha, in which over 280 people died. The government has announced ex-gratia help to the family members and relatives of those who died and received injuries in the accident.

After the accident, it became very difficult to identify dead bodies and find out their relatives. Since damages and causalities were more related to general compartments, the officials faced new challenges in terms of how to identify relatives of deceased persons.

Suppose you have been given the task to identify the bodies of the deceased members and their relatives so that the government can provide ex-gratia help, then,

a) What ethical dilemmas will you face in the case?

b) Discuss your course of action.

c) In your view, what are the ethical issues associated with the train accident?

Answer.

a) Ethical dilemmas are as follows:

1. Dilemma of what is the right way to identify the bodies-means facts vs. responsibility

2. Dilemma of who should be given priority in terms of identification of bodies – General compartment or reserved compartment or AC. Should there be any prioritisation?

3. Multiple families claiming the same dead body as identification becomes difficult. Human values vs. law

4. Law Vs Compassion: To follow rules and regulations strictly or be compassionate towards the grieving families.

5. Should the existing law be followed or for extraordinary situation, there should be extra-ordinary help.

6. If no one in the family left alive then who should be given ex-gratia help and on what basis.

b) Course of action:

• Assessing total number of deaths and checking total number of travellers in sleeper and general compartment.
• Setting up the help desk for the family members and asking those officials on the help desk to be empathetic towards the family members.
• Taking thumbprints of the dead to ascertain their identity with the use of UIDAI data.
• Use of artificial intelligence-powered websites and SIM card triangulation to identify the unclaimed bodies.
• To identify the bodies of the train accident, the Sanchar Sathi web portal can trace the victims phone number and Aadhaar details using their photographs. Once the identification is done, their relatives can be contacted.
• For those bodies, which do not have any identifiable feature left, there can be tracing of calls made through nearby towers just before the accident and linking them to those which shut down immediately at the time of the crash.
• If there are conflicting claims, DNA test can be conducted. Only once the DNA samples match with the relatives, the body can be handed over to that family member.
• Keeping the simplified procedure of dead body identification and handing it over to the family members as they are already grieving the death of their loved ones.
• As soon as the body is identified, the family members should also be given ex-gratia help in a fast track manner.

At the end, a robust system should be established for identification, processing the details of documents, grievance redressal, publication of the list of people who died in the accidents to  ensure there is objectivity in the list.

c) Ethical issues associated with the train accidents:

• Not learning from past accidents: Other countries have improved and have almost zero level causality but India has not yet improved and learned from past accidents.
• No respect and value to human life: Due to negligence of some railway employees, such fatal accidents occur which result in loss of life of hundreds of people.
• Dereliction of duty: When train accidents happen due to human error by railway officials, it shows dereliction of their duty.
• Pain and suffering of injured people in the accident and their relatives.
• Lack of appropriate safety measures: Train accidents suggests that zero error policy and absolute safety standards are not put in place. It puts the lives of thousands of people on stake.
• Poor investigation of accidents: This leads to weak accountability and injustice to the victims of accidents.

The most important ethical issue is lack of sincerity and moral commitment in us  to take a resolve above politics and self-interest and bring-in a precision-management system. There have been incidents like

1. Bhopal gas tragedy

2. 6-7 serious train accidents

3. Vishakhapatnam gas leak

4. Morbi-bridge accident in 2022

But it seems overall our state of governance, regulation and adherence to SOP remain passive and casual. Big fishes are not punished. Only small fishes are  punished in the name of responsibility that create a serious ethical governance problem.

Conclusion:

Every life counts and the State should be the protector of life of every citizen. It’s not always the technology that will prevent railway accidents. The railway officials should be morally responsible towards their work. Together the technology (like the KAVACH system/anti-collision device) and ethical public servants will ensure zero rail accidents.

As per various reports CAG and NCRB, it has been found that due to lack of adequate personnel and infrastructure, railways has suffered. There is expansion without safeguards. Therefore, the need of the hour is to address financial governance problem before we try to address problems of ethical governance.