Must India wait 227 years to make its railway lines accident proof?
Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on his way to the site of collision between the Kanchanjungha Express and a goods train near Rangapani railway station, on 17 June, 2024. PTI
On Monday, Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw rode a bike to the Kanchenjunga Express train accident site in West Bengal's Darjeeling district. The tragic collision occurred near Rangapani station involving a goods train and the Sealdah-bound Kanchenjunga Express causing the derailment of three rear compartments of the express train, resulting in at least 15 fatalities and approximately 60 injuries.
Vaishnaw is not a stranger to rescue and relief operations after train accidents. If the Bengal accident this year in June, the same month last year in 2023 wasn't a cheerful one either for the railway minister. To twist the opening line of TS Eliot’s 1922 poem 'The Waste Land' — ‘April is the cruellest month’ — June indeed seems to be the cruellest month for India's current railway minister. Two different years, two different ministerial terms but bound together by tragedy.
Last year on 2 June, the deadly triple train accident happened in Balasore, Odisha, which claimed 275 lives and left over 1,000 injured. Vaishnaw was quick to reach the spot and personally led a massive and meticulously coordinated response effort. Within hours, up to a thousand railway officers and officials were dispatched to the crash site. Despite the devastating impact, the response was swift and efficient. It was the coordinated efforts of over 2,300 staff members who worked tirelessly for 51 hours to manage the aftermath, restore train services and focussed on reuniting missing persons with their anxious families. The minister's leadership and the dedication of the Indian Railways staff indeed played a crucial role in dealing with one of the most challenging incidents in recent history.
However, the real question is, what kind of legacy does Vaishnaw want to leave behind? Will he be known as a swift responder to crises or as a proactive preventer of accidents?
Slow pace of Kavach implementation
Kavach is an indigenous Automatic Train Protection (ATP) system developed by Indian Railways. Its primary purpose is to enhance safety and prevent train accidents by automatically applying brakes when a collision risk is detected.
Earlier in response to a query in the Rajya Sabha regarding the progress of Kavach deployment, Vaishnaw outlined the deployment milestones. He stated that in the fiscal year 2018-19, Kavach was installed over 250 kilometres. The following year, 2019-20, saw an additional 15 kilometres equipped with the system. In 2020-21, Kavach expanded by 321 kilometres, and in 2021-22, the coverage increased by 859 kilometres. However, in the fiscal year 2022-23, only 20 kilometres were added to the network.
Kavach has been deployed along approximately 1,500 kilometres so far with the cost of deploying Kavach estimated at Rs80 to Rs90 lakh per kilometre. Indian Railways has a total route length of 68,000 kilometres.
To determine how many years are needed to complete the Kavach deployment across the entire Indian Railways network at the current pace, we will calculate the annual average deployment and then estimate the time required to cover the remaining distance as follows:
Total distance covered so far
• 2018-19: 250 km
• 2019-20: 15 km
• 2020-21: 321 km
• 2021-22: 859 km
• 2022-23: 20 km
Total distance covered = 250 + 15 + 321 + 859 + 20 = 1,465 km
Current pace of deployment
Total kilometres covered over 5 years = 1,465 km
Average annual deployment = 1,465 km / 5 years = 293 km/year
Remaining distance to cover
Total route length of Indian Railways = 68,000 km
Distance covered so far = 1,465 km
Remaining distance = 68,000 km - 1,465 km = 66,535 km
Estimated time required to complete the deployment
Annual deployment rate = 293 km/year
Time needed to cover the remaining distance = 66,535 km / 293 km/year ≈ 227 years
Therefore, at the current pace of deployment, it would take approximately 227 years to complete the installation of Kavach across the entire 68,000 km of Indian Railways.
As of now, Kavach is active at 135 railway stations and is installed in 77 locomotives within the South Central Railway Zone.
High speed trains vs snail paced safety measures
In December 2020, the Ministry of Railways released a draft of the National Rail Plan policy document, aiming to expand capacity and increase Indian Railways' modal share from 26 per cent to 45 per cent by 2030, addressing demand up to 2050. The extensive 1,101-page plan, developed by the RITES–AECOM joint venture, outlines timelines and strategies for the development and upgrading of the mainline, high-speed rail system and dedicated freight corridors. The document, as comprehensive as the Indian Railways itself, covers various aspects such as demand forecasting, rail freight share estimation, rail network corridor demand, capacity utilisation and identification of bottlenecked sections including dedicated freight and high-speed rail corridors. Notably, there is no dedicated chapter on safety.
Despite its thoroughness, the word 'safety' appears only 31 times in the document. The treatment of safety in the plan mirrors the standard approach found in many railway documents: mundane, routine and often overlooked.
In April 2008, in a significant milestone for Konkan Railway, the anti-collision device (ACD) it developed was granted patents by China, Russia and Singapore. Previously, Konkan Railway had applied for worldwide patents for this technology and already secured patents in India and South Africa.
On 12 March, 2010, then Asom Gana Parishad MP Birendra Prasad Baishya inquired in the Rajya Sabha about the introduction of the ACD in the North East Frontier Railway (NFR), the zone in which Monday's accident site falls. In response, the then Minister of State in the Ministry of Railways, E Ahamed confirmed that the ACD, developed by Konkan Railway Corporation Limited (KRCL), had been undergoing service trials as a pilot project on 1,736 route kilometres of the North East Frontier Railway since July 2006. The total expenditure incurred on the project then was Rs 99.31 crore.
Six years later a release from the Ministry of Railways on 27 July, 2016 repeated the same thing that the ACD, developed by KRCL, was implemented as a pilot project over 1,736 route kilometres in the NFR. However, it said that the trials encountered complex operational and technical issues that KRCL could not fully resolve due to the design limitations of the ACD. Consequently, there was no plan to proliferate the ACD.
That is when the Indian Railways started exploring alternative ATP systems and initiated several pilot projects to evaluate the technical suitability of these systems for Indian Railways.
Incidentally, the NFR is the same zone where the tragic train collision took place on 2 August, 1999. Two trains, carrying approximately 2,500 passengers, collided at the remote Gaisal station in West Bengal. The accident was caused by a signalling error, with both trains mistakenly using the same track, as three of the four tracks on the line were closed for maintenance. The impact was so severe that the trains exploded upon collision resulting in the deaths of at least 285 people.
Too little, too late
According to reports on 15 June, 2024, Indian Railways has invited bids for the installation of the Kavach system covering 10,000 km with this safety system.
To date, tenders for 6,000 km of the Kavach system have been issued, with the technology already operational in 139 locomotives including Electric Multiple Units, within the South Central Railway zone.
Contracts for the Kavach system have also been awarded for key routes including the Delhi-Mumbai corridor (spanning the Ahmedabad-Vadodara section) and the Delhi-Howrah corridor (covering the Lucknow-Kanpur section), totalling about 3,000 route km. These sections fall under the jurisdiction of Eastern Railway, East Central Railway, North Central Railway, Northern Railway, West Central Railway and Western Railway.
Originally, the entire project was expected to be deployed across the country by 2024 which now seems to be a mission impossible.
No 'Kavach' on two parallel iron rails of death?
Last year, the Union railway minister said that three companies — Medha Servo Drives, HBL Power Systems and Kernex Microsystems — are already associated with the Indian Railways on the Kavach project. Moreover, Kyosan, Siemens and GG Tronics were to join the initiative.
Without Kavach, the tracks are littered with heartbreaking scenes: lifeless bodies, the injured left to suffer lifelong scars, pools of human blood and the bitter curses of grieving families, all bearing witness to the tragic consequences of neglect and apathy. It sounds dramatic but that's the unadulterated truth. And Ashwini Vaishnaw knows it well.