Concerns mount among rail users in the wake of another train accident

West bengal train accident

Indian Railway (IR) has had a decade of some big projects, and yet on certain fronts, not much has changed. While Vande Bharat trains have cut travel time and given a facelift to IR, recent accidents have exposed that much still needs to be done for safety.

Since the June 2023 Odisha rail tragedy, India has seen numerous train derailments and three passenger train mishaps in just the last six weeks, killing 17.

In the latest such incident, two people were reported dead and 20 injured when the Howrah-Mumbai Mail from Kolkata derailed in Jharkhand on June 30.

A survey conducted by Local Circles found that 42 percent of Indian railway travellers were unhappy with the safety features offered by Indian Railways, while 59 percent of them were concerned about repeated instances of derailment, and about track maintenance.

The Local Circles study received over 61,000 responses from citizens in 378 districts. Sixty-two percent of respondents were men and 38 percent women. Forty-two percent of those polled were from tier 1 cities, 32 percent from tier 2 and 26 percent from tier 3, 4 and rural districts.

Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav told reporters on July 23 that out of the total Budget allocation of Rs 2.52 lakh crore for 2024-25 for Indian Railways, around Rs 1.08 lakh will be used to boost railway safety.

"Around Rs 1.08 lakh crore of the total budgetary allocation will be used to upgrade railway safety systems like upgrading old railway track, improving signalling systems of Indian Railways, creating flyovers and underpasses and installation of Kavach (anti-collision) system on Indian Railway network," Vaishnaw had said.

He had added that “Kavach 4.0 safety system was approved earlier this month and going forward Kavach installation will be fast-tracked".

The minister had also said that 4,275 km of optical fibres have been laid down under the Kavach systems in India and the aim is to extend the safety measure to at least 5,000 km over three years.

However, despite a decrease in instances, there is no getting around the fact that accidents continue to plague the national carrier.

The Local Circles' survey said that in July 2024, four people died and several were injured after 21 coaches of the Chandigarh-Dibrugarh Express derailed in Gonda, Uttar Pradesh.

In another accident in June 2024, at least 15 people died and 60 were injured when a goods train collided with the Sealdah-bound Kanchenjunga Express near Rangapani station in West Bengal.

Railway experts including former Railway Board chairman Ashwani Lohani have called for making safety the number one priority at Indian Railways.

"The Kanchanjunga Express accident like those earlier is not merely a technical failure or lapse, nor can the blame be only apportioned to the human resource; the fact remains that such lapses arise out of the manner in which the organisation is governed,” Lohani had said after the Rangapani accident.

Similarly, Swapnil Garg, a former officer of the Indian Railway Service of Mechanical Engineers, said that the recent spate of incidents should serve as a wake-up call for the railways and authorities should take a fresh and hard look at the lax safety culture.

However, Garg said he does not expect things to change overnight. The Indian railway system is huge and it will take time to make it safer, but there needs to be a will, he pointed out.

Similarly, Sudhanshu Mani, chief architect of India’s first Vande Bharat project, said that comparing the safety record of Indian Railways in terms of fatalities and injuries to past records to paint a rosy picture is misleading.

"Modern systems and tools make achieving a zero-fatality record an attainable goal, and this is what the railways should be pursuing," Mani said.

He added that the rail ministry should prioritise using budgetary allocation to improve safety systems.

Mani also said that tackling issues like improving the information management and communication within Indian Railways is paramount.

"Even as facts about the accident were still emerging, the chairperson of the Railway Board prematurely declared the container train crew’s disregard of signals as the prima facie cause," Mani said.

In 2023, India witnessed 25 'consequential' train accidents: six collisions, 13 derailments and six fires in trains, taking the lives of around 400 people and injuring another 1,000.

Indian Railways defines consequential accidents as those that cause loss of life, several injuries, loss of rail property, or stoppage of rail traffic.

Not only have these accidents raised questions about whether the top brass has failed to enforce safety regulations, but they have also highlighted the slow rollout of the Kavach indigenous train collision avoidance system.

According to a Comptroller and Auditor General of India report, 69 percent of accidents were due to derailments caused by issues like track defects, incorrect loco piloting, engineering and maintenance issues, and operational errors.