Mishaps sound alarm over safety of Indian railways

Editor's note: On June 2, nearly 300 people were killed and more than 1,000 were injured in a triple train collision in the eastern Indian state of Odisha. One month after the deadly accident, China Daily reviews concerns over safety of the country's railway networks as well as the trauma inflicted on survivors.

Experts call for infrastructure upgrade, emphasis on maintenance

Concerns over the safety of Indian railways are mounting as the country recovers from one of its deadliest train disasters in 20 years following an accident on June 2 in Balasore, Odisha state, that left nearly 300 people dead and more than 1,000 injured.

Retired railway officials and experts have said the government should pay more attention to upgrading the current railway infrastructure, particularly to ensure the safety of passengers. It also should lay more emphasis on maintenance, and introduce additional safety measures to prevent future mishaps.

The federal railway ministry is planning to revise the signal engineering manual and to bring new tech and procedural changes as part of safety measures.

Multiple new technological interventions will be carried out to ensure passenger safety, India's Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on June 20.

The minister did not confirm if the human error or interference had played a role in the signaling malfunction. "Who has done it and what is the reason will come out of an investigation," Vaishnaw added. Earlier last month, the minister said the full investigation into the accident was still underway, but "the root cause has been identified".

The Central Bureau of Investigation, the federal police investigation agency, was entrusted by the Indian government to find out the exact cause of the accident.

A senior railway official has said the three-way train crash in Balasore was caused by an error in the electronic signaling system that led a train to wrongly change tracks and crash into a freight train.

The incident has brought attention to train safety in India at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi has invested billions of dollars in modernizing the railway, which carries about 13 million passengers daily.

There are two possibilities for the fatal error, "either the system malfunctioned or someone manipulated the signaling", said a senior official from the Centre for Advanced Maintenance Technology, a department under the Ministry of Railways, news website Scroll.in reported on June 10.

Let the result of the investigation come, said Subodh Jain, a retired member of the railway engineering board.

Indian trains run on mixed tracks with both passenger and goods trains running on the same track. The time available to perform normal maintenance work has been decreasing because the lines are overused, Jain said.

Separate tracks

There should be separate tracks for passenger and goods trains. The government is aware of the problem and has taken steps to separate the tracks on busy, important routes, Jain said.

While the Ministry of Railways is modernizing on many dimensions, the government should pay more attention to upgrading the railway infrastructure, maintenance, technology and safety culture to minimize mishaps in the future. People who are involved in the safety function must have more training, said G. Raghuram, a railways and infrastructure expert and former director of the Indian Institute of Management in Bengaluru.

The emphasis should be on minimizing fatalities and injuries after an accident. The government should send helicopter fleets with medical and other equipment to the accident spot quickly. Interiors of railway coaches should be designed in such a way that lives can be saved or injuries can be minimized in the event of an accident, Raghuram said.

In its 2022 report on "Derailments in Indian Railways", the Comptroller and Auditor General of India flagged multiple shortcomings and made several recommendations to ensure passengers' safety.

The report found multiple factors, including track defects, maintenance issues, outdated signaling equipment and human errors, as main causes of derailments.

From 2017 to 2021, there were more than 100,000 train-related deaths in India, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. That figure includes cases in which passengers fell from trains, collisions, and people being mowed by speeding trains on the tracks.

In recent years, the Indian government has invested nearly $30 billion in railways by manufacturing semi-high-speed trains, modern coaches and locomotives, and redeveloping the stations.

The government has made a huge budgetary allocation and implemented some megaprojects to ensure passengers' safety, and the budget to ensure passengers' safety is increasing, said Amitabh Sharma, chief information officer at the railways ministry.

The writer is a freelance journalist for China Daily.