dna special: Lack of commuter database, death math hurdles in Mumbai suburban insurance
The Mumbai suburban system — among the world's densest with more than 7.5 million passengers crammed into 3,000-odd trains every day — might have to wait for the kind of rail travel insurance that the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has sized up for outstation passengers.
The Mumbai suburban system — among the world's densest with more than 7.5 million passengers crammed into 3,000-odd trains every day — might have to wait for the kind of rail travel insurance that the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has sized up for outstation passengers.
The hitch is lack of a database of suburban commuters authentic enough for insurance policies to be processed.
The ambitious plan, in partnership with public sector firm New India Assurance, was reported in dna's Wednesday edition.
Speaking to dna, IRCTC managing director Dr AK Manocha said, "I would love to roll out a travel insurance scheme for Mumbai's suburban system as well. There is a robust season pass culture in Mumbai. However, there is lack of a database and many of the addresses are incomplete or so basic that insurance companies will end up spending all their time trying to find the claimant."
Ironically, it was early last year that the Allahabad High Court had recommended that all railway zones have a database of commuter addresses. However, both Western and Central Railways have been slow in implementing the recommendations despite some 70% of the 7.5 million suburban commuters holding season passes.
Railway officials say the process of taking down the address of a commuter while s/he buys a season pass is time-consuming. During the June 20-25 period last year, when the city's commuters arrived in droves at booking windows to renew their season pass to counter a fare hike, none of the booking clerks made a note of the passengers' addresses.
The other hurdle that travel insurance plans for Mumbai's suburban trains is purely financial. In a city where about 3,700-odd people die and almost 5,000 are injured in local train-related accidents, the insurance payouts could be colossal.
"Imagine if around 3,000 people have to be given a few lakhs each every year. It runs into several hundred crores and the insurance business is such that it cannot find itself in a situation where the payout is almost equal to the corpus that gets formed from the commuters' contributions. Even investing the corpus in the best of ways for better returns will not be able to make the insurance business a healthy one in such a scenario," said an official.
At the moment, the only mechanism under which a suburban train accident victim gets compensation is under the Railway Claims Tribunal Act passed in 1987, which decides claim amounts framed under the Railway Accident and Untoward Incidents (Compensation) Rules, 1990. On an average about 14 cases are filed the Railway Accident Claims Tribunal (RACT) Mumbai, which is the largest in the country, and the payout by both WR and CR is around Rs50 crore a year.
Compensation chart as per Railway Accident and Untoward Incidents (Compensation) Rules, 1990Death: Rs4 lakhLoss of both hands: Rs4 lakhLoss of one hand, one leg: Rs4 lakhLoss of both legs: Rs4 lakhLoss of eyesight: Rs4 lakhSevere facial disfigurement: Rs4 lakhAbsolute deafness: Rs4 lakhLoss of both feet: Rs3.6 lakhLoss of thumb: Rs1.2 lakhLoss of four fingers of one hand: Rs2 lakhLoss of three fingers of one hand: Rs1.2 lakhLoss of two fingers of one hand: Rs80,000