Yet another derailment this week, of the Chandigarh-Dibrugarh Express killing at least three people and injuring more than 20, has put the spotlight on the marvel that used to be India’s pride: the world’s largest train service system used by millions around the country. This is the fourth derailment in the past few months. Almost every year has seen a horrific accident or derailment that claimed tens or hundreds of lives. The excuses trotted out range from the banal to the hard-to-believe, but the question that must be asked is: what is union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw’s real agenda given that he appears keen to run an admired system to the ground?
For one, the Train Collision Avoidance System (TCAS), popularly called Kavach, has not been installed across the board. Its non-availability has been cited to explain the collisions and derailments. The Indian Railways utilised Rs 322 crore out of the total Rs 799 crore budgetary allocation in FY 2023-24 for the installation of Kavach, as Vaishnaw told the Parliament – barely 40 percent. This shows, contrary to popular perception, that the Indian Railways has not been strapped for funds to instal the system to protect lives. Why this is not priority is something only Vaishnaw knows. Fancy names like Kavach mean little unless the drudge work is done.
Then, the reluctance to reintroduce the full train network after the pandemic has meant, as recent data showed, that there are 2,309 fewer passenger trains on the tracks. The total number in 2012-13 was 12,559 which reduced to 10, 250 in 2021-22. Passengers in long-distance trains are struggling to find seats, over-crowding and use of reserved coaches has become common, people wait days at railway stations and so on. Clearly, the transport network that serves India’s poor has been deprioritised by the Modi government in favour of a few high-profile projects like the Vande Bharat Express and the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train which alone has a cost tag of Rs 1.65 lakh crore.
Why has Indian Railways been sinking in the past few years and who benefits by running it to the ground? Is this a deliberate strategy to prepare for its sale to private bidders the way Air India, among other public sector units, was?
.png)
.png)
.jpg)
