The Inspection Is Not the News !
On the night of 21 July, the #LucknowDivision of #NorthernRailway announced that its Divisional Railway Manager (#DRM) had carried out a window trailing inspection between Lucknow and Ayodhya Dham—
He looked at the track. He stopped at Rouzagaon and Rudauli, checked the station master’s room, the passenger amenities and the cleanliness, and issued instructions to the officials concerned.
Video attached. Twenty-three thousand views.
#AhmedabadDivision of #WesternRailway has been busier. Its DRM inspected the division for monsoon preparedness, reviewing waterlogging spots, drainage and track safety—
Hashtags: #MonsoonPreparedness, #RailSafety.
On another day, during an inspection of the Katosan-Rantej section, the same officer lifted a live #turtle out of the #ballast from under a #sleeper and released it into a nearby reservoir—
This was offered to the public as an example of the railway’s sensitivity and humanitarian commitment towards wildlife conservation. #TurtleRescue.
Somebody should say the obvious thing. None of this is news.
A DRM inspecting track is not an achievement. It is the job. Window trailing inspections, station inspections, pre-monsoon drainage checks: “these are not initiatives, they are the calendar.” They sit in the schedule of inspections precisely because nobody trusts they will happen otherwise. “An officer who performs them has done what he was posted to do, and nothing beyond it.”
Which raises the uncomfortable question. If a routine inspection is worth a video and a press note, are inspections now so rare that one of them qualifies as an event? If that is true, the problem is considerably larger than the post. If it is not true, then the post exists for some other reason.
That reason is not hard to name. The appetite to be seen has travelled down the hierarchy. A #politician needs public connect, because his job depends on being known. That logic stops at the political level. It does not extend to the permanent executive, and a civil servant who borrows it has misread what he is. The railwayman’s constituency is the train that runs on time and the passenger who gets home unhurt. Neither of them is on X.
Divisional handles have quietly turned into an appraisal instrument, aimed less at the travelling public than at the floor above.
The opposite habit deserves no easier ride. There are senior officers who have laid down that nothing they inspect is ever to be put out, on the plain ground that they did nothing special. The instinct is sound. Knowing the difference between authority and applause is what officer-like quality (#OLQ) looks like in practice, and how a man handles power gets settled in exactly such refusals. Hardened into a standing rule, though, it swings to the other extreme. A division does have things worth telling the public, and a blanket prohibition tells the publicity staff only what they must not do.
That leaves the PR man reading a new boss with no help. He cannot know in the first month whether this one wants the timeline filled or wants to be left out of it, so he plays safe, and playing safe means either overdoing it or going quiet. Neither choice is his to defend. The sane officer closes that gap early and says plainly what is to be issued and what is not.
An officer freshly posted and keen may be forgiven a few enthusiastic posts. The correction is not his to make. It belongs to the men above him, who can let this drift or settle it with a single instruction. Silence from them is endorsement.
Sources—
- @drm_lko, window trailing inspection Lucknow to Ayodhya Dham, 21 July 2026: https://x.com/drm_lko/status/2079590322733191623
- @drmadiwr, monsoon preparedness inspection, Ahmedabad Division: https://x.com/drmadiwr/status/2074057607296458994
- @drmadiwr, turtle rescued on Katosan-Rantej section, Ahmedabad Division: https://x.com/drmadiwr/status/2075119744076886237