A balancing job ahead

As Railway Board chairman, Kumar, the first Dalit to get the office, will have to deal with rising cases of accidents and concerns of people both within and outside the Railways

- DHRUVAKSH SAHA & ARCHIS MOHAN

Late last month, the Ministry of Railways created a historic first for the second time in as many years. A year after appointing Jaya Varma Sinha as the Railway Board's first woman chairman and chief executive officer (CEO), the Appointments Committee of the Cabinet appointed Satish Kumar the head of the board -the first Dalit to get the office.

In the corridors of Rail Bhawan, Kumar had been seen as a contender but hardly a frontrunner for the top post, which made his appointment a surprise to many. Frontrunners included four serving members of the board.

Kumar was member (traction and rolling stock) before becoming chairman. He was inducted into the railway fraternity in 1986 from the Indian Railway Service of Mechanical Engineers (IRSME), and his colleagues have known him to be a thorough technocrat throughout his career.

"I have known him to be a meticulous man during my stints of working under him," a senior official said. "He is someone with a modern outlook, leveraging technology wherever possible. He was responsible for developing a number of software-based tools and applications for operational purposes," he added.

Kumar, who holds a bachelor of technology (B Tech) in mechanical engineering from the Malaviya National Institute of Technology, Jaipur, made a key breakthrough with the “fog safe” Device.

The GPS-based navigation tool, designed to reduce contingencies during foggy weather with low to negligible visibility, provides onboard real-time information to loco pilots regarding the location of fixed landmarks such as signal, level crossing gate (manned & unmanned), permanent speed restrictions, neutral sections, etc.

It displays approach indications of the next three approaching fixed landmarks in geographical order accompanied with a voice message approximately 500 metres on approach. So far, Indian Railways has deployed 20,000 such devices across the 67,000-kilometre rail network.