Crews worked tirelessly on Sunday to rehabilitate railway tracks after India’s worst train disaster in decades put the safety of one of the world’s largest networks in question yet again.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the scene of the collision in the eastern Indian state of Odisha on Friday, where he offered his condolences to the families of nearly 300 dead from this disaster, before visiting some of the approximately 900 injured.
He was to virtually inaugurate on Saturday a new electric train, linking Bombay to Goa, equipped with an ultramodern anti-collision safety device called “Kavach”, meaning shield in Hindi.
Mr Modi has launched a $30 billion rail infrastructure upgrade program to boost both India’s economy and connectivity.
The train is the Indians’ favorite mode of transport and also the cheapest on long-distance journeys, both for people and for goods.
Analysts say the collision shows the rail system still has a long way to go.
“Purely operational failures are not uncommon in Indian railways,” Subodh Jain, a former senior railway official, told Agence France-Presse.
” A radical change “
Some 14,000 trains and 8,000 locomotives run daily on the 64,000 kilometer rail network. The system of the most populous country in the world, which carries more than 21 million passengers a day, according to official figures, is under enormous pressure.
According to Mr. Jain, this pressure is such that it is often difficult to “block a line long enough” to make the necessary improvements.
“There must be a radical change,” he insists.
On Sunday, Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said a ‘change that occurred in the electronic switching is the cause of the accident’, referring to the complex computer system managing the traffic on Indian railway tracks to prevent train collision.
Mr Vaishnaw declined to give further details, stressing that it would be “not appropriate” before the final investigation report, but that “those responsible” had been identified.
The first conclusions of the investigation have not yet been made, but the Times of Indiaciting a preliminary investigation report, said on Sunday that “human error” in signaling may have caused the collision between three trains.
Mr Modi warned that no official would be spared.
India has spent heavily in recent years to modernize its rail network, run express trains, build modern stations, lay new tracks and install electronic switching systems.
However, Jaya Varma Sinha, a member of the Indian Railway Board, told reporters that even if the Indian-designed ‘Kavach’ had been installed, it would not have prevented Friday’s disaster.
huge boulder
“Tested at different levels, it is very effective in preventing trains traveling in the opposite direction on the same track from colliding,” she said.
“But in this case, even Kavach could not have prevented the collision, the situation being comparable to a huge boulder suddenly crashing in front of a speeding train”.
Some 20,000 people on average died each year in rail accidents (collisions, derailments, falls on the track, etc.), between 2017 and 2021, according to official data.
Experts say that while accidents have decreased over time, the necessary improvements have been made, at best, in stages.
Derailments account for 69% of accidents, according to the 2022 report by the country’s top audit institution, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).
The CAG blames them on faulty tracks, lack of maintenance, dilapidated signaling equipment, combined with human error.
In India, one of the world’s fastest growing major economies, improving the network takes time, Jain said.
“We are running more trains, longer trains of 24 to 25 cars, faster and more frequent trains on all tracks: imagine the pressure,” he says.
“What we need is to run more shorter trains, ideally 18 cars, more frequently on all tracks,” he explains, “but that requires a lot of improvements that will take time. time. Money is no longer a problem”