Odisha Train Accident: An Accident Waiting to Happen

Neeraj Jain

Amid the spree of flagging Vande Bharat trains and Amrit Bharat Stations, the worst ever triple train accident in recent times has taken place in Balasore, Odisha. Nearly 300 people have died, nearly a thousand injured.

What has been making news about the railways in the Godi media in recent times is the almost daily flagging of a new Vande Bharat train by the Prime Minister himself. The railway minister recently announced that the railways have set a target of connecting 200 cities with Vande Bharat trains by the middle of next year. Another priority of the railways is the much hyped Amrit Bharat Station scheme, announced in this year’s budget, under which 1,275 stations are to be redeveloped. This focus of the railways on ‘improving passenger experience and comfort’ (to quote the railway minister) is of course taking place at the cost of affordability — the lowest fare in these fully-AC Vande Bharat trains are nearly double the regular AC Chair car train tickets, and many times the regular second class tickets. At the same time, this push towards elitisation of railways along with an obsession with speed is also taking place at the cost of neglecting passenger safety – and it is this that has led to the Balasore train tragedy.

Within hours of the train accident, accounts known for spreading Hindutva and Bharatiya Janata Party propaganda swung into action to shield the government as well as Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw from criticism amidst the growing calls for the minister to resign. They sought to divert attention from the utter negligence of the Modi Government with regards to rail safety, by insinuating that Muslims were somehow responsible for the incident![1]

Following the Odisha train accident, the PMO has gone into an overdrive to explain how much the government has done as regards railway modernisation and safety. But its claims do not square up with other reports that point out that top railway officials have been expressing concerns about neglect of railway safety, and even a performance audit of the railways conducted last year by the CAG.

Just two days before the train accident in Odisha, The Hindu reported that a high-level meeting of members of the top railway management had expressed concern about increasing number of accidents across the railway network. The report titled “Increase in Train Accidents Worries Indian Railways” said that there were 48 consequential train accidents in 2022–23 compared to 35 in the previous year, citing Railway Ministry sources. The number of non-consequential train accidents was 162 in 2022–23.[2] To quote from The Hindu report:

Reviewing the safety scenario at a high-level meeting comprising members of the top railway management, including the general managers of zonal railways, the chairman and CEO of the Railway Board said that the increase in consequential train accidents was a matter of “grave concern” and urged the safety organisation to be proactive.

The report goes on to say that an important reason for the increasing number of accidents was acute shortage of manpower, because of which loco pilots were being deployed over and above their prescribed working hours resulting in a threat to the safety of train operations. While according to the rules, duty hours of the crew could not exceed 12 hours under any circumstances, loco pilots were being forced to work beyond the stipulated duty hours due to shortage of manpower. For instance, in the South East Central Railway, the duty hours of loco pilots who were deployed on duty for more than 12 hours in March, April and the first half of May this year stood at 35.99%, 34.53% and 33.26% respectively.

In fact, the railways are facing severe staff shortage of not just loco pilots, but also of signals and telecommunications staff. Newsreports say that signalling failure could be a probable cause for Friday night’s accident. According to a report in the National Herald, based on replies given by railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw in Parliament:

Out of a total 3.12 lakh non-gazetted posts in the Indian Railways lying vacant pan-India as of 23 December 2022, there are a total of 77,079 vacancies under the signal and telecommunications and traffic transportation departments all across the country…. In the South Eastern Railway — which Bahanaga Bazar, the site of the gruesome triple-train tragedy on Friday, 2 June, is a part of — there are 17,811 vacancies for non-gazetted posts and 150 vacant gazetted posts as of 3 February 2023.[3]

That the railways are functioning with inadequate staff which is compromising safety is also brought out in the performance audit of the railways conducted last year (2022) by the Comptroller and Auditor General. In its report, ‘Derailment in Indian Railways’,[4] the CAG analyses the railway accidents that took place between 2017 and 2021. The report says that out of a total of 217 consequential accidents during this period, derailments accounted for 75% of the total accidents (163), and the percentage of accidents caused by derailments and collisions — i.e. what was witnessed at Balasore — is 80% (174).[5] While ‘human error’ is often blamed for the majority of the accidents, and in the Odisha accident, the Railway Board has even ordered a CBI enquiry to examine all possible reasons for the accident, the CAG’s data and conclusions suggest the problem has more to do with how the railways is functioning under the Modi Government:

The Indian Railways managed the maintenance activities with vacancies in work force and with nominal outsourcing. This revealed that required steps were not taken for adequate staffing in safety category, which can impact quality of maintenance.[6]

The CAG report also points to another major reason behind the increasing number of train accidents, which ultimately led to the three-train crash in Odisha: reduction in expenditure on safety measures, due to shortage of funds. In 2017–18, the railways had set up a railway safety fund, better known as the Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh (RRSK), with a corpus of Rs 1 lakh crore over a period of 5 years (an annual corpus of Rs 20,000 crore). This itself was significantly less than that required for funding the needed safety measures, as projected by an internal committee of senior railway officials[7]. But even this funding of Rs 20,000 crore per year has not been available to the RRSK[8]. The CAG report points out that this inadequate deployment of funds for the RRSK has “defeated the primary objective of creation of RRSK to support absolute safety in Railways.”[9]

The Ministry of Railways has outlined prioritisation principles for funding of safety works out of the RRSK. But due to shortage of funds, expenditure on Priority-I works has declined from Rs 13,652 crore (81.6% of total expenditure) in 2017–18 to Rs 11,655 crore (73.8% of total) in 2019–20.[10]

On the other hand, the CAG report makes the disturbing finding that usage of funds for non-priority areas went up in several zones to as much as 25%.[11]

The CAG report notes that there were a total of 2017 consequential and other train accidents over the period 2017–21. Of these, the maximum were due to train derailments. Of the 217 consequential accidents, 163 or 75% were due to derailments, and of the 1800 other accidents, derailments accounted for 1229 or 68%. The CAG’s analysis of these derailment accidents reveals that the most important factor behind them was track maintenance and renewal.[12] There is nothing unexpected in this finding. The document on ‘Safety Performance’ of the Ministry of Railways states that “Track forms the backbone of railway transportation system” and therefore emphasises the need for track maintenance and renewal when required.[13] However, the allotment of funds (Final Grant) for Track Renewal works declined from Rs 9,608 crore (in 2018–19) to Rs 7,417 crore in 2019–20. The funds allocated to track renewal works were also not fully utilized. The result was that in all the railway zones, the expenditure on track renewals as a percentage of total expenditure declined. For Western Railway, one of the busiest segments of the railways, during 2019–20, of the total expenditure, the money spent on track renewals was a mere 3.01%.[14]

The CAG report concludes that:

The Railways Administration failed to act in accordance with the observation of the Standing Committee on Railways (2016–17) wherein it was observed that the physical as well as financial targets in respect of track renewals need to be enhanced as per the annual requirement for track renewals for safety.[15]

Meanwhile, the Indian Railways has admitted that the railways’ automatic train protection system ‘Kavach’ was not available on the route where the accident occurred on Friday evening. Kavach has been developed indigenously by the Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO) in association with three Indian vendors. It is not clear as yet whether the system could have prevented the accident.

To conclude, the devastating accident raises questions about the state of the Indian railways, adequate personnel, and implementation of safety, quality and maintenance measures.

Clearly, all the claims made by the Modi Government that the railways have been prioritising passenger safety is all bumkum. Amidst all the glitzy flagging of Vande Bharat trains, a major train accident was waiting to happen.

References

1. For more on this, see the article: “Even a Train Tragedy in India Is Being Blamed on Muslims Online”, Scroll Staff, 4 June 2023, https://scroll.in.

2. S Vijay Kumar, “Increase in train accidents worries Indian Railways”, 31 May 2023, https://www.thehindu.com.

3. “Over 77,000 Indian Railways posts vacant in signal, traffic departments”, 4 June 2023, https://www.nationalheraldindia.com.

4. Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India for the year ended March 2021: Derailment in Indian Railways, https://cag.gov.in.

5. Ibid., Para 3.2.2.

6. Ibid., Para 7.1.

7. Ibid., Para 4.3.1.

8. Ibid., Para 4.2.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid., Para 4.3.3.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid., Para 3.2.2.

13. Ibid., Para 4.4.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

(Neeraj Jain is Convenor of the activist group, Lokayat, and associate editor, Janata Weekly. He has also written several books and booklets.)

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Following the Odisha train tragedy, the Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge has written a hard-hitting letter to the Prime Minister on 5 June 2023, questioning the Railway Ministry’s decision to ask the CBI to investigate the rail accident. The CBI is meant to investigate crimes, not railway accidents; it cannot fix accountability for technical, institutional and political failures. The decision of the Modi Government to rope in an agency without the required expertise to investigate the accident only indicates that it is a diversionary tactic to derail any investigation into the systemic malaise behind the accident. We give below an extract from his letter:

Press Release, 5 June 2023

Letter to Prime Minister (extract)

– Mallikarjun Kharge, President, Indian National Congress

1. At present about 3 lakh posts are lying vacant in Indian Railways. In fact in the East Coast Railway — the site of this tragic accident — about 8278 posts are vacant.

2. The Railway Board itself has recently admitted that loco pilots have had to work longer hours than mandated due to manpower shortage. Loco pilots are crucial to safety and their overburden is proving to be the main cause of accidents. Why have their positions not been filled yet?

3. On February 8, 2023, the Principal Chief Operating Manager of South West Zonal Railway, referred to the collision of two trains in Mysore, and asserted for the need to repair the signaling system and had also forewarned about potential accidents in the future due to this flaw. But why and how could the Ministry of Railways ignore this crucial warning?

4. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Crihrme in its 323rd Report (dated December 2022) has criticized the complete apathy and negligence of the Railway Board towards recommendations of the Commission of Railway Safety (CRS). The report further revealed how the CRS investigates into only 8% to 10°% of train accidents. Why has no effort been made to make CRS stronger and ensure its autonomy?

5. The latest audit report of CAG, makes a special mention of how between 2017–18 to 2020–21, about 7 out of 10 train accidents happened due to derailment from tracks. But this was erroneously ignored. Between 2017–21, there was zero testing of Rail and Weld (Track Maintenance) for safety in East Coast Railway. Why were these grave red flags ignored?

6. The CAG report also highlights that funding for the Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh (RRSK) has been reduced. Why were the required funds not allocated for track renewal work? Is this not being callous about the safety of passengers?

7. Why was the previous government’s plans to roll out the anti-train-collision system, originally named Raksha Kavach put on the back burner? This system was developed by the Konkan Railway and tested successfully by the Research Designs and Standards Organization (RDSO) in 2011, it was meant to prevent collision of trains. Your government simply renamed the scheme ’Kavach and in March 2022, the Railway Minister himself projected the rechristened scheme as a new novel invention. But the question still remains, why have only a measly 4% of routes of Indian Railways been protected by ‘Kavach’ till now?

8. What was the reason for merging the Budget for Indian Railways with the Union Budget in 2017–18? Has this not adversely affected the autonomy and decision making capacity of Indian Railways? Was this done to undermine the autonomy of Railways to push reckless privatisation? Even though privatisation of Railways was repeatedly opposed during Parliamentary proceedings, but all concerns have been ignored by bringing trains to stations under the ambit of brazen privatisation. It’s apparent that the government’s arbitrary decision making including the National Rail Plan for up to 2050 without any consultation or detailed discussion is aimed at exploiting the railways and making it an easy target and fodder for private companies.

9. A huge entity like the Indian Railways has brought respite to all sections of the society since independence. But it’s puzzling to comprehend, who have been the beneficiary of the decision to withdraw concessions that were being given to the elderly, children and women during the pandemic? The insensitivity is evident when upper berths are being allotted to the elderly and women, who are also being forced to face different kinds of problems now.

10. Unfortunately, the people in charge — your goodself and Railway Minister Ashwani Vaishnav — do not want to admit that there are problems. The Railway Minister claims to have already found a root cause, but yet has requested the CBI to investigate. The CBI is meant to investigate crimes, not railway accidents. The CBI, or any other law enforcement agency, cannot fix accountability for technical, institutional and political failures. In addition, they lack the technical expertise in railway safety, signalling, and maintenance practices.

11. The nation still remembers the 2016 derailment in Kanpur, where 150 people lost their lives. The Railway Minister asked the NIA to investigate. Subsequently, you yourself claimed in an election rally in 2017 that there was a “conspiracy”. The nation was assured that strictest punishment would be meted out. However, in 2018, the NIA closed the investigation and refused to file a chargesheet. The nation is still in the dark — who is responsible for 150 avoidable deaths?

The statements so far and the roping in of yet another agency without the required expertise, remind us of 2016. They show that your government has no intent to address the systemic safety malaise, but is instead finding diversionary tactics to derail any attempts to fix accountability.