The Cockroaches of Railways | Part 9–Lesson: Swachchhata is Antidote to the Cockroaches

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But Who Wants Clean Administration—Question is on Political Leadership of Indian Railways

1. Purpose

This note places three whistleblower inputs of August 2026 before senior management and political leadership. All three concern the conduct of senior officers at RDSO and in allied establishments. Across the three runs one pattern. Institutional resources and vendor money now fund the comfort of the officers who regulate those vendors. The note states the inputs first, then the institutional stakes, then six actions.

The note’s purpose is to focus attention on issues, not on persons. The persons will change. The issues will not, unless senior management acts on them.

2. Basis and verification state

The #Railwhispers has verified the principal input, on the RDSO officers’ club and other claims made. The leadership may like to get the truth verified through CBI.

Counter views and rebuttals are welcome as always.

3. Input 1: the officers’ club at RDSO, Lucknow

The input describes a new high-end bar at the Railway Officers Club, RDSO, completed in August 2026 under direction from the top level. It lists a full stock of costly imported liquors, high-class new sofas, ultra-luxury interior, ambient lighting, a large wall displays, a costly music system and full non-veg catering. Funding is described as part official and part sponsored. The input compares the atmosphere to a dance bar and invites confirmation from RDSO staff.

The sponsorship claim is specific. A Kolkata based #wagon component firm is named as the captured sponsor. The Head of Department (Wagon), who also holds the post of club secretary, is described as the point of capture. The input connects the sponsorship to a recent #coupler approval. The claim, in plain terms, is that a design approval was traded for a bar.

Two further claims follow. #First—serving government employees, senior supervisors and female staff among them, operate the club and the bar counter. #Second—the Director General is present in the bar every evening and hosts costly dinners for a small circle. The circle: the Head of the Wagon Department, a Principal Head of Locomotive Department and an Additional Director General who is running the show and also he is the kingpin behind all these corrupt and extraordinary activities.

4. Input 2: the quality review as a collection circuit

The same input describes a new use of the quality review. Vendors of each directorate are called in rotation for a discussion in the name of quality. Collection follows the discussion. Each directorate now carries a target.

The institutional inversion deserves one sentence. The instrument built to protect quality has now put a price tag on it.

5. Input 3: conferences, farewells and vendor money

A second input concerns a PHOD (Mechanical) conference at Kolkata, held in honour of the concerned Member Railway Board. It describes liquor parties with families at a five star hotel. The Member’s preferred single malt is described as flowing like water. A large coach interior contractor sponsored the hospitality through RCF Kapurthala. It is not out of place that head of the Kapurthala unit is eying the post of this Member on his retirement.

The same input reports conduct as retirement nears. Bidding on transfers and postings has quickened. JAG officers are placed on SAG posts without check. The request transfer business runs in every department, and its product is officers fitted to lucrative posts. The input asks a fair question: how will work get done?

A third input concerns a conference at #IRITM, Lucknow, on 26 August 2026. A PHOD (Traffic Operations) conference in name, it is described as a large farewell for the three senior traffic officers retiring from Level 16 from Patna and Lucknow. Contributions are described as collected from loading parties. Senior traffic officers from across the country will attend with families.

The training institute and a Principal Head of Department at the Railway Board are arranging the music, dance and liquor. The officer posted at RDSO is arranging costly sponsored gifts from RDSO vendors for every attendee. A parallel celebration is under preparation at RDSO itself.

Read together, the three inputs describe the same season. Several senior officers approach retirement, and the establishments they head now fund and stage their farewell tours. The funders are the freight customers and the vendors those establishments exist to serve or to regulate.

6. Why this reaches senior management

Five reasons, in rising order of consequence.

#First, RDSO’s mandate is not incidental to safety. #RDSO stood for rigorous investigation and superior engineering knowledge. Its proper work is service engineering, new design and reliability engineering. It writes the specifications, approves the vendors and investigates the failures for the whole railway. That is exactly why its capture costs more than the capture of any single zone.

The current Director General has no background in science or engineering. No meaningful contribution on service engineering, new design or reliability engineering is on record in this tenure. The consequence is visible every month in the CRB safety review. Use RDSO as a dumping yard and garbage is the output.

#Second, the vendor question is already live. #MSME protests, component shortages, and manipulation of vendor approval and of specifications are under open discussion, with RDSO’s role at the centre. The conduct described above serves every entrenched incumbent. It does not serve the MSMEs the Prime Minister has made a national priority.

A regulator that dines on vendor money cannot regulate the vendor. The club bar and the quality circuit are not two stories. They are one story: the approval power monetised twice, once in kind and once in cash. The entry barrier that a captured approval creates falls on the smallest #vendor first.

#Third, the office widens while the reports stand. Railway Board order of 13.08.2026 gives the Director General (RDSO) additional charge of General Manager, North Eastern Railway, for a leave period—only five days. The order is routine. The context is not. An officer under adverse whistleblower reports now holds, for the moment, two of the system’s senior chairs.

#Fourth, the conference culture deepens the silo. High level conferences groom young probationers, and that value is real. The IRITM event, as described, is not grooming.

It deepens the fortress a single service has built around itself, funded by the parties that service regulates and answerable to nobody. The railway needs a whole of railway approach. It cannot afford a stronger fortress inside itself.

#Fifth, the farewell tradition itself is at stake. Farewells are a healthy tradition and their sanctity should be respected. That is the reason to protect them from this, not the reason to ignore it. When senior management is reduced to the level of petty revellers, investment cannot buy safety. However many lakh crore are invested, trains will continue to derail, part and burn.

7. Six actions

  1. Take the feedback directly. The Minister is an engineer by education and can test these claims at first hand. We have suggested this before: interview officers before any posting to RDSO, the Railway Board and senior vigilance positions. Nothing less will deliver true to the Prime Minister’s vision. Feedback filtered through the same channels the inputs describe will arrive laundered.
  2. Fix the RDSO succession now. The current Director General retires soon. Select a proper and tough engineer, tested on service engineering, design and reliability. Not a politically correct balancer. The selection made at this vacancy will state, more loudly than any circular, what the post is for.
  3. End the dumping yard. State a science or engineering background as a requirement for the post of Director General (RDSO). Publish the requirement, so the next posting cannot ignore it quietly.
  4. Use tenure powers in both directions. The government extends the tenures of officers it rates as performers. In the same vein, it should have no difficulty with early termination of tenures that fail, and place correct persons. A power used only to reward is only half a power.
  5. Audit the money. Club accounts, bar stock, sponsorship receipts, conference funding and gift procurement, at RDSO and IRITM, for August 2026. The trail is fresh and short. The audit either clears the officers or converts these inputs into a record.
  6. Protect the farewell. Farewells are worth keeping, which is the reason to take them away from vendor money and official machinery. A farewell paid for by the parties an office regulates is not a farewell. It is an invoice.

Further reads: the series so far

  1. “The Cockroaches of Rail Bhawan | Part-1: Read the Last Column” 6 August 2026
  2. “The Cockroaches of Rail Bhawan | Part-2: Fourteen Reversals and One Survivor” 7 August 2026
  3. “The Cockroaches of Rail Bhawan | Part 3: Six Times Asked, Four Times Refused” 8 August 2026
  4. “The Cockroaches of Rail Bhawan | Part 4: Feeding the Cockroaches” 9 August 2026
  5. “The Cockroaches of Rail Bhawan | Part 5: Who Pays, Who Runs It” 10 August 2026
  6. “The Cockroaches of Rail Bhawan | Hand the Machine to the Man Who Sold It” 12 August 2026
  7. “The Cockroaches of Rail Bhawan | Part 6: Read the Passenger List” 17 August 2026
  8. “The Cockroaches of Rail Bhawan | Part 7: Who Does the Railway Ask?” 18 August 2026
  9. “The Cockroaches of Rail Bhawan | Part 8: Quietly Built to Fail, and Against the Prime Minister’s Advice” 21 August 2026