There is no railway system quite like the Indian railways. Trains remain an essential lifeline in India, the world’s most populous country of 1.4 billion people, carrying about 13 million passengers a day for work, family and leisure on trains that weave across 40,000 miles of track, more than enough to wrap around the Earth.
Friday night’s collision involving two passenger trains and a freight train in the eastern state of Odisha was one of the worst accidents since 1999, when a collision between two trains in West Bengal killed 285 people. More recently, 160 people died in 2016 when the Indore-Patna Express derailed and as recently as February, two goods trains collided in Uttar Pradesh.
The cause of the Odisha accident is still being investigated, including whether a signalling error led the Chennai-bound Coromandel Express to fatally change tracks, causing it to plough into a stationary freight train.
Though the number of railway accidents has come down in the past few years – there were 139 accidents in 2014-2015 compared with 55 in 2019-20 – derailments of trains remain the main cause.
Under the current government, led by the prime minister, Narendra Modi, billions have been spent to upgrade and modernise the railway, including a plan to have 100% electrification of the railways by 2024 and the aim for them to go net zero by 2030. The railways are also in the process of installing an anti-train collision system, which causes trains to brake automatically, but so far it’s only operational on 2% of the network.
Authorities confirmed the technology had yet to be installed along the eastern rail route, where Friday’s accident took place, which is one of India’s oldest and busiest routes in terms of passengers and trains carrying oil and coal.
Recently there has been a record allocation of funds for infrastructure and safety upgrades, with a particular focus on the introduction of modern new stations and high-speed Vande Bharat – translating as “salute to India” – electric trains, inspired by the Japanese bullet trains, one of Modi’s flagship projects.
On Saturday, Modi was meant to to inaugurate one such new high-speed train, connecting Goa and Mumbai and equipped with a collision avoidance system, but it was cancelled after the disaster.
However, at the same time, safety concerns have been rising on the railways and the number of consequential rail accidents on Indian Railways’ increased by 37% last year. Though most didn’t result in any casualties, it was still raised by the chair of the railway board last year as a “matter of grave concern”.
Experts say that while the focus has been on glossy modernisation projects, safety remains the biggest problem for the Indian railways. An increasing number of trains have been put on the tracks to meet demand yet the workforce has not risen at the same level, leading to greater pressures on staff and more human error, and has meant that the installation of safety measures has been slow.
Indian Railways, however, maintained Friday’s accident did not reflect deeper safety issues. “This question is arising because there has been one incident now. But if you see the data, you will see that there have been no major accidents for years,” said a railways ministry spokesperson.