Saturday’s railway disaster in northern India where a passenger train derailed killing 23 was the third accident this year. Last year in November, 150 people died when a train swerved off the tracks early morning, leaving hundreds of people trapped in mangled coaches for hours. These disasters, in most cases, happen due to creaky infrastructure and overcrowding of trains. The latest accident in Muzaffarnagar happened due to negligence of engineers who were supervising track maintenance. Investigation showed that a 15-metre section of the track was missing and the train driver and station managers were unaware of the maintenance work. Reports said workers simply dumped their tools and ran away from the spot when they saw the approaching train. The Ministry of Railways has sacked several officials but this criminal neglect is widespread in the world’s fourth largest rail network.
A total of 27 accidents have taken place since the Modi government took over in 2014. Previous investigation reports have broadly identified two major factors for accidents — poor infrastructure and human failure. While this year’s budget has allocated almost $16 billion (Dh58.7 billion) for improving safety, government departments, including the railways are notorious for underspending funds. The government needs to ensure that funds meant for train and track safety are spent properly. Secondly, the government must take a close look at its priorities. For example, the government’s obsession with bullet trains is laughable at a time when the network is failing to safely run trains at less than 100kph speed. The country plans to spend almost $16 billion on just one project — a bullet train running at 350kph between Mumbai and Ahmedabad. A nation where basic safety norms are openly violated, the government must do more to spend wisely and put off such grand projects till the network achieves global safety standards.
