Odisha derailment: Why do trains keep going off track in India?

In one of the worst rail accidents in years, at least 233 people died and more than 900 were injured after two passenger trains collided near Balasore in Odisha on Friday (2 June). The accident took place around 7 pm when 10-12 coaches of Coromandel Express, running from Kolkata to Chennai, derailed and fell on the adjacent track. These derailed cars dashed into Howrah Superfast Express, plying from Karnataka’s Yeswanthpur to West Bengal’s Howrah, which was coming from the opposite direction. Amitabh Sharma, a railroad ministry spokesperson, said that up to three cars of the Howrah Superfast Express also went off track following the collision, reported Associated Press (AP). A third freight train was also involved in the accident, Odisha chief secretary PK Jena told NDTV. Rescue operations are underway, with the Indian Army, National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), Odisha Disaster Rapid Action Force and police personnel deployed at the accident site. Major train accidents are not uncommon in India. But what is the reason behind these mishaps and what can be done to avoid them in the future? Let’s understand. Rail tragedies in India According to a Comptroller and Auditor General report published last year, seven in 10 railway accidents that occurred between 2018 to 2021 were due to derailments, reported IndiaSpend.

Several factors such as faults in tracks, maintenance issues and operating errors were cited as the cause for these derailments.

According to the 2022 National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report, railway accidents witnessed a 38.2 per cent surge in 2021 as compared to the previous year. Maharashtra accounted for 19.4 per cent of the reported 17,993 accidents, followed by West Bengal. “The 17,993 railway accidents caused injuries to 1,852 people and caused deaths to 16,431 people during 2021,” said the NCRB data. As per the report, as many as 11,036 people were killed due to either falling off trains or colliding with it at railway tracks. [caption id=“attachment_12685612” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] More than 200 people have died in Odisha’s triple train crash on Friday. Reuters[/caption] Human errors such as fault of drivers, sabotage, signalman’s error and mechanical failures were other reasons behind the accidents, reported The New Indian Express citing NCRB. Last January, at least nine people lost their lives and 36 others were injured after 12 coaches of the Bikaner-Guwahati Express derailed in West Bengal’s Alipurduar. In 2020, as many as 13,018 train accidents took place, killing about 12,000 railway passengers. A year before, 27,987 train accidents were reported in India. Another major rail accident was seen in 2018 when a passenger train ran through a crowd gathered on the tracks to celebrate Dussehra in Punjab’s Amritsar, killing 59 people and injuring 57. More than 140 casualties were reported in 2016 when Rajendranagar Patna Express derailed in Uttar Pradesh’s Kanpur. ALSO READ: Rescue operations underway at Odisha train crash site in Balashore What’s ailing the Indian railways? According to Hindustan Times (HT) report, train derailments mostly occur due to “rail fractures” owing to the expansion or contraction of tracks during extreme summer or winter conditions. An internal railways memo in 2014 called the fracturing of tracks “the nightmare of the [railways] engineering department”, reported BBC. “One particular incident cannot cause a derailment. It has to be a combination of three, four or five different mistakes before a derailment happens,” Swapnil Garg, professor of Strategy Management at the Indian Institute of Management, Indore, told IndiaSpend. “When there is a signalling failure, mechanical failures and civil engineering failures, we find that these collectively result in a derailment,” he added. Lack of maintenance and funds is also what is ailing the Indian Railways, which is one of the oldest train networks in the world. Sanjay Pandhi of the Indian Railways Loco Running Men Organisation (IRLRO), told HT in 2016, “While technology and funding issues are there, the big problem is that adequate time to carry out routine maintenance of tracks is never available as loco pilots (train drivers) are under stress to run more trains in lesser time”. [caption id=“attachment_12685632” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Deadly train accidents are not uncommon in India. Reuters File Photo[/caption] Speaking to CNN, Debolina Kundu, associate professor at the National Institute of Urban Affairs, explained in 2017: “The system is overstretched, overstressed and has a direct impact on the safety of the operations in running trains”. The Comptroller and Auditor General analysis showed that shortage of funds and non-utilisation of available funds for track renewals was responsible for 26 per cent of the derailments that took place between 2018 to 2021, reported IndiaSpend.

Railways need funds to replace outdated carriages, build new tracks and renew the old ones.

According to a 2018 study by the Indira Gandhi Open University, the economic loss due to derailments between 2000 and 2016 is estimated to be Rs 86,486 crore. “Railways are losing. Money is being spent on launching new trains but not enough is being spent on safety and upgrading infrastructure. As a result, maintenance of tracks to prevent derailments and other priorities like capacity and doubling gets little attention,” Alok Kumar Verma, a former officer of the Indian Railway Service of Engineers, told IndiaSpend. Experts also blame the overuse of tracks as well as flag overloading in coaches as a cause for concern. “The trunk lines between the four major stations in the country – Delhi, Howrah, Mumbai and Chennai – have not seen any addition or doubling of track for years”, Verma was quoted as saying by IndiaSpend. Dinesh Trivedi, former Railways minister, pointed out in an Indian Express article in 2016 that it is mostly the poor who lose their lives in such train mishaps. “Most of such accidents take place in trains categorised as non-VIP ones, unlike the Rajdhani, Shatabdi, etc. Does that mean Rajdhanis and Shatabdis are absolutely safe? The answer is a big no”, he wrote. So, what can be done? The government needs to increase investment in the sector rather than “relying on revenue from the railway’s internal generation”, the former Railways minister suggested in his 2016 Indian Express article. Railways also need to boost infrastructure, including upgrading tracks and constructing more lines. Kundu told CNN in 2017 that a proper survey should be done to ascertain “the capacity of the infrastructure to bear the additional stress.” Earlier in February, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced an outlay of Rs 2.40 lakh crore for Indian Railways, which was the “highest to date”. “The Government of India must make serious efforts to spend more on railways as the cost of railway infrastructure is too high for the Indian Railways alone to bear,” the former chief engineer told IndiaSpend. “Going forward, Indian Railways will have to define its break-even points and bring down utilisation of capacity to 60 per cent-70 per cent, to ensure the system works more optimally, to bring down derailments even more,” Garg, who has also worked with the Railways previously, was quoted as saying by IndiaSpend.  With inputs from agencies Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.