Source: https://zeenews.india.com/railways/odisha-train-accident-deadly-rail-crash-shifts-focus-from-vande-bharat-express-to-safety-2617337.html
Publisher: Zee News
India’s vast rail network is undergoing a $30 billion transformation with gleaming new trains and modern stations but Friday’s deadly train accident shows more attention should be paid to safety, industry analysts said. At least 261 people were killed in the country’s worst rail accident in over two decades after a passenger train went off the tracks and hit another in the eastern state of Odisha. State monopoly Indian Railways runs the fourth largest train network in the world. It transports 13 million people every day and moved nearly 1.5 billion tonnes of freight in 2022.
Long-considered the lifeline of the world’s most populous country, the 170-year-old system has seen rapid expansion and modernisation under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push to boost infrastructure and connectivity in the fast-growing economy. This year, the government made a record 2.4-trillion-rupee ($30 billion) capital outlay for the railways, a 50% increase over the previous fiscal year, to upgrade tracks, ease congestion and add new trains.
A new, semi-high-speed train built in India and called the “Vande Bharat Express”, or “Salute to India Express”, is showcased as evidence of this modernisation, with Modi himself flagging off the first journeys of many of the trains around the country. But Friday’s crash has come as a jolt to this makeover, experts said.
“The safety record has been improving over the years but there is more work to do,” said Prakash Kumar Sen, head of the department of mechanical engineering at Kirodimal Institute of Technology in central India and lead author of a 2020 study on “Causes of Rail Derailment in India and Corrective Measures”.
