Odisha train accident: How Indian Railways is negligent to safety needs

New Delhi: Could the ghastly Balasore train accident have been prevented through the adoption of technological solutions?

The answer to this goes abegging as the Indian Railways have maintained a radio silence on the "prima facie" cause of the accident.

Did the disastrous mishap take place because of a rail fracture? Because of Signal Passed At Danger (SPAD) or human error? Because of poor track and asset management? Or because of the inability of the Indian Railways to execute the train collision prevention system called the "Kawach"? 

Kawach, incidentally, is an upgraded version of the earlier indigenously developed system called the Train Collision Avoidance System ( TCAS).

The rollout of the Kawach systems — which provides alerts when a driver jumps a signal and takes control of the brakes — has been painfully slow.

Pending the inquiry report, this much can be said: IR has failed to accord adequate attention to safety-related tasks of track, signalling and infrastructure upgrade.

Also read: Will Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw resign over Odisha train accident? 

"India runs the slowest trains, but disastrous accidents have continued to happen. The highest number of rail fractures continues to happen on the IR network. Clearly, attention to maintenance issues concerning tracks, signalling, coach and locomotives has been low," former IR official Alok Kumar Varma said.

IR in past years has been on a publicity blitzkrieg of sorts on big-ticket projects such as the Vande Bharat rollout, station redevelopment and the procurement/manufacture of high-powered locomotives and modern coaches. 

In contrast, attention to safety issues has been low. 

One example: Of IR's total route kilometres of 68,043, only about 3000 km are today covered by the anti-collision systems. 

The technology, in past decades, has undergone several name changes and endless rounds of discussions and meetings have been held. But the project has moved forward laboriously and slowly.

The Train Protection Warning Systems (TPWS) — being used by the European Railways — has virtually been discontinued after initial contracts were awarded to equip sections in Chennai suburban, Kolkata Metro and the Delhi-Agra on the mainline network of the Indian Railways. 

In the eighties, IR provided the Auxiliary Warning System (AWS) in the Mumbai suburban but failed to finalise a suitable Automatic Train Protection system that was in existence anywhere in the world. 

The Kawach - a pet project of Prime Minister Narendra Modi - is being operated only on a 1500 km route of the South Central Railways; while contracts have recently been awarded for deployment of the systems on the Delhi-Howrah And Delhi-Mumbai routes.

Pictures of Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw were splashed across newspapers and the electronic media when he travelled in a train engine to test the efficacy of the Kawach systems in March last year. 

The trials — in which the CEO of the Railway Board was also present — included Automatic Train Protection features including the collision between two trains coming with full speed on the same track from the Opposite directions.

Clearly, this amounted to premature publicity, as IR ostensibly has a long way to go in terms of technological and infrastructure upgrades.