West Bengal train accident highlights need for a thorough review of misplaced priorities of past two decades in Indian Railways

• The Indian Railways is back in the news after a freight train rammed into a passenger train, near Siliguri in West Bengal, which left at least nine people dead and more than 40 injured.

Key highlights

• Since 1995, the country has witnessed seven deadly train accidents, five of which took more than 200 lives — the highest number of deaths, 358, was recorded in the Firozabad collision of 1995.
• The multiple train collision at Balasore in Odisha, about a year ago, claimed 287 lives. Together, these seven accidents took more than 1,600 lives.
• Among railway planners, it is widely held that a large, densely populated developing country like India should have a strong railway system that can compete with road and air transport to serve the needs of the people and economy.
• Neither the Railway Board nor the Centre has ever denied this imperative.

Doubling speed of railway

• In fact, plans have been repeatedly announced to double the speed of trains while improving safety and drastically increasing line capacity, as most trunk routes have faced acute congestion.
• But the results have been very discouraging.
• The Indian Railways has consistently lost market share in both passenger and freight streams.
• In fact, since 2010-12, the total volume of both freight and passenger traffic has stagnated or declined, while air and road modes have seen growth of 6-12 per cent each year.
• Between 2014-15 and 2019-20, passenger traffic declined from 995 billion pass-km to 914 billion pass-km, and freight stagnated between 682 and 739 billion net tonne-km. For the period after 2019-20 to the present, the Railways has not made these traffic figures public.
• It is no exaggeration that the Indian Railways (IR), which enjoys a monopoly on rail transportation, is facing a severe crisis.
• IR could be relegated to a secondary role where it primarily carries heavy freight and some slow-moving passenger trains, as in large, thinly populated, economically advanced countries like the US, Canada, and Australia.
• Surely, with its high population density, a large developing country like India can’t afford such a decline in rail transport.

The Comptroller and Auditor General report

• The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has recently issued two important reports on safety, speed, and punctuality on IR.
• The report on speed and punctuality for the years 2019-20 says that between 2014 and 2019, there has been no increase in the average speed of mail and express trains —this has remained at 50 to 51 kmph
  • contrary to claims of achieving an average speed of 75 kmph under Mission Raftar, which has appeared in some form every five to seven years since 2005.
• As for freight trains, the average speed actually declined marginally, contrary to the Board’s claims of doubling the speed.
• It is pertinent to mention that 20 years ago, IR acquired technology and manufacturing capabilities to build coaches and locomotives to raise the maximum operational speed from 110-130 kmph to 160-200 kmph.
• The second CAG report, which is on accidents, is equally sobering.
• Though there has been some reduction in the number of accidents, it is largely a result of the manning of unmanned railroad crossings.
• The data shows little improvement with respect to derailments and collisions.
• The report has expressed serious concerns about the continuing high rate of asset failures, particularly signal failures and rail fractures.
• Some of the worst accidents on IR have been due to these. Last year’s multiple train collision at Balasore was caused by a signal failure.
• Clearly, a thorough review of the misplaced priorities of the past two decades that are driving IR to a terminal decline is absolutely required.