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A Village Burnt Overnight: Tears, Loss and Survival in Dhamangaon Blaze

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  Sitting amid the blackened remains of his home, 32-year-old Nikesh Gawali carefully broke open a half-melted plastic box with a screwdriver. His hands shook slightly, not out of fear, but out of hope. “I’m trying to find my daughter Aarti’s gold earrings,” he said quietly, still focused on the box. “She’s just five. I got them made recently after months of labour work.” The plastic box, warped and blackened by heat, was one of the few things left from his two-room house on the outskirts of Dhamangaon village . All around him lay ash, broken tin sheets and charred wooden beams. The walls had cracked under the heat and the front room’s tin roof had caved in completely. What remained was a blackened debris all around - almost nothing to suggest a home once stood there. Nikesh earns his living as an agricultural labourer, like many in the village. Work is uncertain and depends on the season. Those earrings weren’t just jewellery - they were a small dream, a reward for his hard work,...
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Narrow gauge platform: SECR blank on utililisation of Rs one crore given to CR

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General Manager of South Eastern Central Railway (SECR) Navin Tandon 

By Dheeraj Fartode
Authorities of Nagpur Division of South Eastern Central Railway (SECR) are blank about utilisation of Rs one crore given by SECR to Central Railway two years ago for development of narrow gauge platform at Nagpur Railway Station.
Newly appointed General Manager of SECR Navin Tandon also kept mum over the issue and asked Divisional Railway Manager (DRM) S L Verma to clarify on the same. However, Verma had no concrete information about utilisation of money. He told the reporters that he would inform the media later.

Tandon was on his maiden tour of Nagpur Division of SECR after being appointed as General Manager. SECR had given Rs one crore to Central Railway two years ago to develop basic amenities and maintenance of the platform at Nagpur Railway Station. However, Central Railway has not started any work till date and situation at the platform is the same.

Addressing a press conference at SECR’s DRM office on Saturday, Tandon said that installation of ‘green toilets’ in trains had been started. Indian Railway and Defense Research Organisation (DRDO) jointly started the process to develop ‘green toilets’ for railways in a bid to keep trains, platforms, and tracks clean.

A train coach with ‘green toilets’ will have a chamber for collection of all the waste. The collected waste would be converted into compost with the help of bacteria, Tandon said. There was no possibility of ‘green toilets’ to be fitted into trains at Motibag workshop, he said in reply to a question.

Asked about increase in number of thefts in running trains, Tandon said that Indian Railway was trying to fill up vacancies of Railway Protection Force (RPF) and Government Railway Police (GRP). “We are monitoring crime in railways to find out a solution,” he added.

Maintenance of narrow gauge coaches was being done properly in Motibag workshop of SECR, Tandon said replying to another question. Broad gauge work of Chhindawada-Nagpur railway line was in the last phase and the line would open for traffic soon.

During his visit to the city, Tandon also paid a visit to SECR’s museum at Motibag. DRM S L Verma, Additional DRM S K Gupta and other officers were present at the press conference.
Navin Tandon is 1976 batch officer of Railway Electrical Engineering Services (REES). He was Additional General Manager of Eastern Railway. He had also worked at Central Organisation for Railway Electrification (CORE), Allahabad; and as Chief Electrical Engineer at South Western Railway, Hubli.

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