With the death toll now at 300 and more than 1,000 injured, the tragic accident in Balasore, eastern Odisha has once again focused attention on the issue of railway safety in India.
The crash was one of the country’s deadliest train accidents in decades, and came at a time when the government was trying to make train travel a pleasant, and, above all, a safe experience.
Such crashes are far from unprecedented in India. In 1999, a collision between two trains in West Bengal killed 285 people, and in 2010, 145 died in the same state when a passenger train derailed and was hit by a freight train. More recently, in 2016, 160 people were killed when a passenger train traveling between the cities of Indore and Patna derailed.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has for the past few years been trying to encourage a push towards rail modernization by introducing high-speed, automated trains on one of the world’s largest and busiest rail networks. This includes a plan to have 100% electrification of the railways by 2024 and make the network carbon neutral by 2030.
Earlier this year, German engineering giant Siemens received a major order to build 1,200 electric trains, while Japanese expertise was commissioned to provide technology and finance to help build the first bullet train, a 508 -kilometer (316-mile) link. between Mumbai and Ahmedabad.
Questions about safety
But experts say crumbling infrastructure has caused more train accidents, raising questions about the money spent on train maintenance and track renewal.
Indian Railways, considered the lifeline of the country with more than 12 million employees, carries 23 million passengers and 3 million tons of cargo every day. More than 21,000 trains operate in an extensive network of more than 65,000 kilometers (40,000 miles).
However, according to a review by the government’s Comptroller and Auditor General, 163 of the 217 ‘consequential train accidents’ between 2017-18 and 2020-21 were caused by derailments, accounting for nearly 75% of accidents.
The report, which was submitted to the parliament in December last year, said that a major reason for these accidents was the lack of maintenance of the railway tracks. Funds for track renewal have dwindled, the report said, and, in many cases, have not been fully utilized.
Fires, accidents at unmanned level crossings, and collisions are other causes of accidents cited in the report. In addition, concerns have been marked by severe manpower shortages, particularly in track safety, with many posts vacant in departments across the network.
Although the cause of the accident in Odisha is still under investigation, officials have suggested that the likely cause was a signaling error that led the Chennai-bound Coromandel Express to fatally change tracks, causing it to crash into a stationary freight train.
“From the nature of the accident, it was due to a fault in the electronic signaling system that led a train to wrongly change tracks,” a senior railway official, who requested anonymity, told DW. “The passenger train entered another loop line and collided with a goods train.”
Mamata Banerjee, chief minister of West Bengal and former railway minister told Indian media, “There is no anti-collision device on the train, as far as I know. If the device was on the train, it would not have happened.”
Modernization at the cost of safety?
The new anti-train collision system, named ‘Kavach,’ causes trains to brake automatically, but it only works on 2% of the vast rail network.
The Kavach system is designed to help train operators avoid signal transmission and excessive acceleration while also providing support for train operations during adverse weather conditions such as dense fog. By automatically applying the brakes when needed, the system ensures better control of train speeds.
“If the Modi government has made a quantum leap in the modernization and expansion of the railway network, with an unprecedented increase in capital expenditure, has the investment in safety increased proportionately?” MK Venu, an economic analyst, wondered in an interview with DW.
The initial development of Kavach started in 2012 and was completed last year. But less than 5 billion Indian Rupees (€56.5 million, $605 million) were allocated to install the system last year, when it was estimated that a trillion rupees would be needed to cover the entire rail network. . This year’s budget brought a windfall for the railways, with $29 billion allocated for rail development, the highest ever.
Obviously realizing that the railways have a huge multiplier effect on the economy, the government now plans to double the lines faster, convert almost the entire network to broad gauge, introduce high-powered locomotives , and completion of electrification projects. All these measures are expected to increase the line capacity of Indian Railways.
India also launched high-speed, automated Vande Bharat trains, equipped with state-of-the-art passenger facilities that provide a faster and easier travel experience.
The government intends to introduce around 400 Vande Bharat trains in the next five years and develop hydrogen-powered, eco-friendly Vande Metro trains to replace the old trains designed in the 1950s-60s.
Much more needs to be done to upgrade the 65,000 kilometers of tracks and install modern signaling equipment on the network. For now, the train accident in eastern Odisha is a stark reminder of the hurdles the government faces in fulfilling its promise to make the railways more efficient and safer.
Edited by Ben Knight
