You Hire Monkeys, You Get Monkey Business
Two Balasore class failures in one fortnight, and the culture of posting behind it
On 21 August 2026, a passenger train at #BNDM (Bondamunda) took the wrong line. #Railwhispers published a whistleblower’s input that brought this #Balasore class failure into the open.
- 24 August 2026: Balasore, Again | Part I: “The Letter Sixty Days Before”
- 21 September 2026: The Cockroaches of Railways | Part 15: “Send Them Home. Then Look at Who Built the House”
A second whistleblower then revealed that the same failure caused the #MEMU derailment at Puri on 14 August 2026. That makes two Balasore class incidents in one fortnight.
The #Minister camped at Balasore in 2023. The Prime Minister also visited the site. Both have seen what this failure can do.
This failure is not new. In 2005, when Modi ji was Chief Minister of Gujarat, the Sabarmati Express was signalled for the main line. It went into the loop instead and hit a parked goods train at #Samlaya, killing 18 people.
- 22 April 2005: The Tribune, “17 killed as trains collide in Gujarat”
We recalled this in 2023:
- 14 July 2023: The Trillion Rupee Blunder – Modi ji Beware!
Samlaya was followed by a similar accident on #NFR. In 2006, a Railway Board letter then called for double cut-in and cross protection in signalling circuits. Its author was then an ED in the Board and is now the Minister’s advisor. The letter is on the Board’s website: “View Section JSP”.
Additional Member Signal proceeding on leave is understood to be the result of the Minister’s ire. The Minister now gets a daily report on work done on point machines.
- 4 September 2026: The Cockroaches of Railways | Part 12: “The Minister Counted the Point Machines. That Is the Failure”
The #Minister was annoyed because he had been promised that all signalling circuits would be fixed within one year of Balasore. Nobody told him why a Board order from 2006 was still not carried out 20 years later.
How did it come to this? Vendors and contractors now influence postings in the Railway Board and RDSO. Engineering expertise has become an inconvenience. Upright officers are called in only when a problem is too big to solve and someone is needed to take the blame.
- 1 September 2026: Approved by RDSO | Part III: “The Chair Was Filled. The Job Was Not”
- 18 September 2026: Approved by RDSO | Part VI: “A Policy Built on Confusion About What RDSO Is For”
- 26 September 2026: Administrative Propriety and Railway Board Postings: “Policy Inconsistencies and Serious Questions on Cadre Control”
The same pattern shows up across the system:
- More fires on trains
- Train parting on Rajdhani class trains
- Brake failures and fires in brakes
- Very high AMC rates for power cars, while the same staff still do the field work
- Alarming corrosion in LHB coaches
- Total dependence on vendors for train set maintenance
- Dependence on AMC and a few chosen vendors for locomotive maintenance
All of it points to one cause: officers of low competence and low integrity hold the posts where decisions are made.
Yes men will steer tenders and policies wherever they are told. A political party that aspires to govern for a long time will one day have to answer for the result, and it will have no one else to blame. Only option is to bet on competence and integrity.
Experts via #Railwhispers have told the Ministry again and again to respect talent, post upright officers and rotate them. The review of 3 September 2026 shows where the road taken in 2006 has led. If the road does not change, the same review will happen again in 2046. By then the Ministry will also have to explain several failures:
- Kavach
- The mega tenders
- The big locomotive and train set contracts
- RDSO, whose letters are not worth the paper they are written on
You hire monkeys, you get monkey business!