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Construction Challenge

Construction – A Challenge

The task was formidable. As Karlis Goppers pointed out in his Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) report in July 1997: With a total number of 2,000 bridges and 92 tunnels to be built through this mountainous terrain containing many rivers, the project is the biggest and perhaps most difficult railway undertaking during the century, at least in this part of the world. The various problems had been carried out efficiently and in a very short time.

The project threw up a whole range of difficulties – technical, financial, emotional and psychological. The rocky Sahyadris had to be bored through. As many as 1500 rivers had to be forded. A railway line had to be built out of nowhere. And once in a while, a poisonous snake, or a tiger, decided to take a close look at goings-on! In the face of collapsing embankments and unrelenting mountains, the engineers had to be tough. But they also had to be deeply sensitive to the feelings of those who had given up their land.

Family life took a backseat during those arduous years; when the engineers went to work; their wives did not know if their husbands would return home that night. Many engineers stayed away from their families during this period, not even returning home for festivals like Diwali.

At the very least, working conditions were uncomfortable; in June 1994, Mahad had floods 10 to 12 feet above the road level, and when they receded, Konkan Railway jeeps had six-inch layers of silt on the seats. Four workers in the Byndoor tunnel in Karnataka faced their own battle with water when theywere thrown back 60 feet by a sudden gush.Water was not the only element that posed danger. During the monsoons in July 1997, an entire mountainside collapsed at Ukshi. Machines were buried under the debris, but 200 labourers had a miraculous escape. People like 30-year-old Ravi Kapoor, an Executive Engineer then in Konkan Railway, had an amazing luck. On October 10, 1997, three months before the Pernem Tunnel was completed, a major collapse took place, just above where he was standing. Mr. Kapoor suddenly found himself in chestdeep soil, his helmet crushed and a boulder on his foot. A colleague rescued him, and Mr. Kapoor escaped, but only just. Several other workers lives had also been saved like this; earlier, on August 26, 1997, it was a timely warning by an engineer that resulted in workers being evacuated when a serious collapse occurred at Pernem Tunnel.

For those who kept going despite the toughest of challenges, the sense of achievement made it all worthwhile. If people had considered this merely as a job, it would have taken 25 years to complete. It was the very challenging nature of the work that led to the team spirit that was so crucial in the successful completion of the project.