Safety on Railways (IR) dominates TV debates and media narratives whenever there is a major mishap. However, with no major railway accident in recent months — barring the unfortunate stampede at New Delhi railway station on February 15 —this is the time to rise above the din and relook at railway safety.
Whenever railway safety becomes a burning issue, critics claim IR prioritises optics over safety, while the government alleges sabotage by external enemies. Both narratives miss the mark. While accidents have declined, the sabotage theory, citing occasional obstructions on tracks, was never convincing as most cases were too trivial to cause a derailment. I have always maintained that while agencies investigate, jumping to conclusions only spreads panic.
A couple of recent railway safety developments went unnoticed. First, the Commissioner of Railway Safety, NE Railway, held IR’s engineering department responsible for the Chandigarh-Dibrugarh Express derailment in Gonda on July 18, 2024, which claimed four lives. IR had earlier tried to attribute this accident to suspected sabotage, despite a lack of any telltale signs. Given that investigative agencies, including the NIA, have not found sabotage in multiple cases they were engaged in, IR must stop looking for a sabotage excuse instead of addressing root causes and taking corrective measures.
Commitment to safety
Second, in the Upper House debate on the Railways (Amendment) Bill 2024, Railway Minister Vaishnaw highlighted the government’s commitment to safety, citing an annual investment of over ₹1 lakh crore and a dramatic drop in railway accidents — from 171 to just 30 in the last decade. While critics in opposition argue otherwise, the downward trend in accidents and fatalities is undeniable.
This improvement is not solely due to the current government but on account of decades of focused work: eliminating unmanned level crossings, enhancing track maintenance and renewal, upgrading signalling systems, and replacing outdated coaches with safer LHB models. It is also acceptable that the massive capital expenditure since 2014 has indeed accelerated these improvements. Bigger budgets for track, signalling, and rolling stock will surely enhance safety incrementally, but what about quantum leaps? One such measure is the Kavach signalling system. Parliament was informed that IR has been refining Kavach since 2016, leading to the final approval of Version 4 in July 2024. It was stated that 15,000 km of track will be equipped with Kavach in five years. But despite a high-profile trial more than three years ago in media glare, not a single kilometre has been added beyond the existing 1,448 km in the Secunderabad area.
IR hastily latched onto the Commissioner of Railway Safety’s recommendation following the Vizianagaram accident on October 29, 2023, which left 17 dead and 34 injured. The recommendation was to equip all locomotives with Kavach, even in non-Kavach territory, to improve safety through its non-signalling anti-collision feature. The spirit behind this was to keep locomotives in readiness pending ground installations, although equipping the locomotive alone does not unleash the full potential of Kavach.
Yet, IR is pushing ahead with fitment on locomotives alone at an estimated cost of ₹8,000 crore, while progress on essential ground installations — telecom towers, control panels, optical fibre cables, RFID tags — remains excruciatingly slow. Work has dragged on for years on the Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah corridors.
Another crucial vision for IR’s safety must involve artificial intelligence (AI). Can India lead the world in AI-driven rail safety? With our vast skilled manpower in the area, this leadership is within the realm of possibility. IR has, however, been dabbling with AI-based applications for CCTV surveillance, crowd control, and passenger amenities, while bafflingly neglecting development of AI-enabled tools for real-time safety interventions.
Given the impossibility of manually analysing the vast digital data from station loggers and locomotive/train microprocessors, AI is inevitable for real-time collation and analysis.
If IR is serious about achieving near-zero accidents, these two areas — Kavach’s full deployment and AI integration — must be its top priorities.
The writer is Retd. GM Indian Railways and Independent Rail Consultant
