India’s Train Collisions Underscore Need for Changing Track

A tragedy occurred on June 2, when a passenger train – the Coromandel Express – running from Kolkata to Chennai veered off the tracks and collided with a stationary freight train. Minutes later, it was hit by another passenger train, the Bengaluru-Howrah Express, that was heading in the opposite direction. The multiple collisions in Balasore district in the eastern Indian state of Odisha claimed the lives of at least 292 people, with around 1,200 others injured. 

It was India’s deadliest rail accident in decades. In 1995, two trains collided at Firozabad near New Delhi, killing over 358 people. The worst train disaster in India’s history was in 1981, when a passenger train was blown off the tracks during a cyclone and fell into a river, killing over 800 people. 

A full investigation has been launched into the train collisions at Balasore.

India has the world’s fourth-largest train network. A state-run behemoth, Indian Railways is a veritable lifeline for Indians. Not only is it one of the country’s largest employers, with a workforce of over 1.2 million personnel, but also millions of people, especially the poor and middle class, depend on it for travel. Its trains carry around 22.15 million passengers and haul around 3.32 million tons of cargo daily.

Traveling by train is perhaps the best way to experience India and get to know its people. However, Indian trains are notorious for long travel times and delays as well as poor safety records. Although train accidents have fallen substantially over the decades, the numbers continue to be large. 

According to a 2022 report from the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), 2,017 train accidents were recorded in the 2017-2021 period. Of these, 217 were “consequential” accidents having serious repercussions in terms of loss of human life, injury to humans, loss of railway property, and so on.

Worryingly, there has been a surge in train accidents over the past year. Citing “sources in the railways,” The Hindu reported that the number of consequential accidents increased from 35 in 2021-22 to 48 in 2022-23. The number of non-consequential accidents was 162 in 2022-23.

The Balasore train collision has drawn criticism of the approach of the current government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the development of railway infrastructure. Instead of improving the safety standards of existing trains, the Modi government has been preoccupied with speed. Since February 2019, Modi has inaugurated 17 India-built semi-high speed Vande Bharat Expresses, with many more to be inaugurated in the coming weeks and months. A Japan-built bullet train is in the pipeline too. 

The Vande Bharat trains and the bullet train are the Modi government’s flagship projects. Modi has personally inaugurated every single one of these trains amid much pomp. That the Vande Bharat trains are being used to impress voters is evident from the fact that new trains have been introduced on routes voting in state assembly elections. Significantly, the first Vande Bharat train linked New Delhi with Varanasi, Modi’s electoral constituency, while the in-progress bullet train will link Mumbai with Ahmedabad in Gujarat, Modi’s home state.

The Modi government has increased spending on Indian Railways. It spent around $30 billion on the rail system in the past fiscal year, a 15 percent increase over the previous year. However, much of the funding has gone toward developing stations and fast trains with “superior amenities.” 

According to the 2022 CAG report, derailments accounted for 69 percent of all train accidents, while derailments and collisions of trains – what happened at Balasore – accounted for 80 percent of consequential accidents between 2017 and 2021.

Renewal of tracks is important to prevent derailments, but allocation for track renewal work has fallen. Indeed, a special fund for railway safety created by the Modi government in 2017 has not only suffered a significant shortfall, but also money meant for priority work is being misused for the purchase of crockery, foot massagers, and furniture, the 2022 CAG report pointed out. 

Successive governments have dragged their feet on fitting train engines with anti-collision devices, saying that these devices need to be imported and were expensive. With India now manufacturing the Kavach anti-collision device – which forces a train to stop 400 meters short of an obstacle – this is no longer a valid excuse. Yet the rollout of such technology has been slow. 

For Kavach to be effective, all 13,000 engines in the Indian Railways have to be fitted with the device. As of March 2022, Kavach had been deployed on a route of just around 1,098 km and fitted to only 65 engines. The trains that crashed at Balasore were not fitted with the devices. 

A day after the accident, Modi assured that stringent action would be taken against those found responsible. 

His statement underscores what is wrong with the Indian government’s approach to rail disasters. Officials and ministers prefer to blame railway employees for accidents, with the government usually touting “human error” as the reason for railway disasters, rather than systemic issues that have contributed to unsafe train travel. 

Following the Balasore accident and Modi’s blaming of individuals for the disaster, officials and ministers have joined the chorus to point in the direction of “external intervenors” for the mishap. Blaming or punishing an individual linesman or junior signal engineer and other lower-level functionaries will not make Indian trains safe.

It is the top decision-makers, the ones whose misplaced priorities have resulted in reduced funding for railway safety, that must be held accountable. Even if it doesn’t take responsibility for the accident, the government should rethink the priority it has accorded to speed and style over the safety of Indian trains.