Make railways safer

Yet another deadly train accident and over a hundred lives lost. Train accidents in India rarely shock the collective consciousness of our citizens, unlike in the developed world, where such accidents are rare. They make headlines for a day or two, the Railway administration expresses regret and sets up a committee to look into the causes of the tragedy, the government announces compensation for the dead and the injured and life goes on till the next major accident. It is no comfort that the derailment of the Indore-Patna Express near Kanpur in the wee hours of Sunday was the first major accident in six years. Thousands of minor accidents involving the railways take place every year, taking lives and leaving many more injured. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, there have been about 30,000 railway accidents a year in recent times and over 25,000 lives have been lost in such accidents. While most of these may involve factors beyond the control of Railways, the number of serious accidents involving derailments and collisions remains high at about a 100 a year, while accidents per million train kilometres — given the size of India’s railway operations, this may be a fairer metric — was about double that of Europe as a whole as of 2012-13.

The bitter truth is that many of these accidents could have been averted had the Railways paid enough attention to upgrading its infrastructure such as tracks and signalling and inducting technologies that help prevent accidents. Unfortunately, for many years, successive Railway ministers have succumbed to populism and given priority to announcing new projects and new trains, thus spreading resources thin. As a result, track renewals and signalling got a short shrift, and many of the projects announced remained uncompleted. To be fair, the Railways is in the process of setting up a non-lapsable fund named Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh with a corpus of ₹1,19,183 crore for safety improvement. A bulk of that money is proposed to be invested in track renewals and safety works at level crossings. This needs to be prioritised, as also finding the ideal solution for its safety challenges. Various safety aids for preventing collision as well as train protection and warning systems continue to be pilot projects.

Indian Railways is a monopoly player in rail transportation, but that does not mean it can take passengers for granted. Along with raising passenger fares, the Railways need to provide superior service — not just better upholstered chairs and berths, on-board services and punctuality but also a safe and secure passage for passengers. Similarly, safe and secure transportation of goods also needs to be assured for the Railways to attract freight traffic. Finally, it needs to prioritise projects that improve the quality of service for the masses rather than a small class of users.

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