What happened in Deogarh Jharkhand is a perfect example of ill planning and ill execution of huge projects—which not only involve huge expenditure but also the human lives—at the same time points to the failure of the administration in ensuring the necessary maintenance. The incident involved the stalling of the ropeway in which at least 3 people lost their lives while over 43 were rescued from 24 cable cars. It has been the success of the rescue operation which has resulted in minimum casualties; otherwise, the incident of such a magnitude could have caused dozens of deaths.
However, on the other side, the state government has turned out to be callous concerning the immediate action as the incident took place around 4:30 on Sunday and the Chief Secretary of state was unaware of the same until 6 pm. The incident occurred after a breakdown of a shaft; as a result, the trolley cabin suffered a massive jerk, bringing it all to a screeching halt.
Even though Chief Minister Hemant Soren has ordered a high-level probe to fix accountability of the incident, the High Court taking cognizance of the matter, the Government seems to be directly involved in the grave lapses that have been committed over time. The ropeway had no emergency exit or backup parallel rope-way plan which left the passengers with no option which they could have used to save their lives even as the administration had no rescue plan in place.
There have been several shortcomings in the ropeway and the same was highlighted in a probe that was carried out in 2009 after a technical team was tasked to vet the viability of the project. The members noted that there was more than normal vibration in the cable trolley even as it noted that there was a steep climb in the upper part of the ropeway. The team also noted that were spots where there was more vibration.
There were important observations made by the team which were outrightly ignored and not a single one out of them was looked into, rectified, for the safety of the passengers. The team also said that due to increased vibrations, the trolley loses its balance even as the tension in the ropeway also becomes jumps above normal. Apart from technical issues, there are also allegations of financial bungling during the execution of the project, something, which also should be probed.
It is clear that the ropeway was not safe for the operations and the same being kept up and running was akin to jeopardizing the lives of the public, with that the responsibility falls on the shoulders of the Government which now has the task of fixing the responsibility. At the same time, such incidents should be taken a lesson to execute and refurbish existing ropeways with proper and parallel emergency backlines and plan to deal with such incidents in future.
