The tragedy also appears rooted somewhere between the mistaken notion that a large headcount would be enough to stop a train hurtling at 80-kmph and the reality that Indian Railways cannot curb all jaywalking, psychologists said.
Clinical psychologists believe a phenomenon called groupthink that allows members of a group to engage in high-risk behaviour with little regard for its consequences may explain why dozens of men, women and their children put themselves in harm's way, walking along railway tracks.
“A group is perceived as stronger than its individual members,” said Jamuna Rajeswaran, an associate professor at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore.
“The members of the group probably did not expect a train to come along, but are also likely to have collectively assumed that any train would allow them to pass,” said Rajeswaran.
Scientists say many of those who were run over by the train at the Dhamara Ghat station this morning are also likely to have been influenced by a process called social learning in which individuals tend to follow the observed behaviour of others.
“When they saw others walking along the tracks without any immediate safety consequences, they would have felt safe too,” said Dherandra Kumar, a consultant clinical psychologist in New Delhi.
“And personal responsibility for collective behaviour goes down when individuals are members of a group,” Kumar said.
“Safety is seen as the group’s responsibility than an individual’s responsibility,” he added.
Experts also say the lack of enforcement of rules related to jaywalking on railway tracks are also contributing to the choice made by possibly thousands of people across the country every day to ignore the risks of being run over by speeding trains. “When there is little enforcement, people will follow the norm — even if the norm violates the law,” Kumar said.
“When something wrong is very commonly practised, and there is no punishment at all, people convince themselves that it’s okay to do that,” Rajeswaran said.
