Editorial: Tragedy on tracks

The latest tragedy raises questions over the pace of adoption of anti-collision technology —Kavach — by the Indian Railways

Hyderabad: The Odisha train mishap, one of the worst accidents in India’s history, is a national shame, exposing the hollowness of the government’s claim of safety record. The heart-wrenching tragedy near Bahanaga Bazar station in Balasore district involving three trains — two passenger trains going in opposite directions, and a stationary goods train —has claimed over 290 lives and left more than 800 people injured. While a full investigation into the accident is under way, prima facie, a signalling error, which led the Coromandel Express to swerve off its designated track and ram a stationary goods train from behind, seems to be the culprit. There is always a sense of déjà vu surrounding train accidents in India that occur with depressing regularity, followed by ritualistic announcements of compensation and inquiry. The death toll is reduced to cold statistics and then it becomes business as usual. The latest tragedy raises questions over the pace of adoption of anti-collision technology —Kavach — by the Indian Railways. This Automatic Railway Protection (ARP) system was unveiled in 2012 but its adoption has been excruciatingly slow due to inadequate funding over the years. The Kavach system is not available on the Balasore route. So far, only 1,445 km stretch has been fitted with the ARP and work is on to cover another 3,000 km. The allocation for Kavach system in the 2023-24 Budget was around Rs 1,000 crore, covering the Delhi- Mumbai route. Given the total length of 1.08 lakh km, it will take at least 40 years for the railways to cover the entire country.

Being the fourth largest network in the world, the Indian Railways carry nearly 23 million passengers a day by over 13,600 trains. A majority of the accidents could have been averted if the Railways had paid enough attention to upgrading its infrastructure such as tracks and signalling and inducting technologies that help prevent accidents. Derailments account for more than half of the rail mishaps, with civil engineering defects being the main culprit. Tracks are often old, overused and maintenance of infrastructure is shoddy. The Anil Kakodkar committee, set up in 2011 to review rail safety, painted a grim picture of performance and recommended upgrading track, repairing bridges, eliminating level crossings and replacing old coaches with safer ones. These measures would cost Rs 1 lakh crore over a period of five years to improve safety and overhaul railway infrastructure. It recommended switching from coaches designed by the Integral Coach Factory to Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) design coaches, considered safer. According to an audit report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), the allotment of funds for track renewal works declined from Rs 9,607.65 crore in 2018-19 to Rs 7,417 crore in 2019-20. Even those funds were not fully utilised. Of the 1,127 derailments during 2017-21, 289 derailments, accounting for 26%, were linked to track renewals.

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