The Recent Mumbra Rail Accident: A Wake-Up Call for Mumbai's Unchecked Growth

Seven deaths a day — that's how dispensable human life is, for it's the number of people who die on the suburban network of the Central Railway every single day.

- Shashank Rao, Saurabha Kulshehtra, Niraj Pandit, Vinay Dalvi and Anamika Gharat

[e-mail] MUMBAI: But the death of five commuters, who fell from two overcrowded trains crossing each other near Mumbra station on June 9, hides a darker truth. It was a tipping point politicians and city planners can no longer ignore.

The accident also compelled Dombivali resident Deepak Dubey, and other railway commuters, to present the Central Railway a charter of demands, hoping to make suburban train travel less perilous. On April 23 last year, Dubey's brother Avadhesh had died along the same stretch when he fell out of a crowded local train on his way to work.

Their demands range from introducing automatic doors in local trains, stopping groupism inside trains, expediting the introduction of more 15-car trains, and posting doctors at railway stations. "We wanted Avadhesh's death to be a turning point in the system," said Deepak. "But a little over a year since my brother's death, five commuters died in an almost identical manner. The authorities remain silent and nothing has changed."

It's the kind of apathy that has allowed the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) sprawl to grow unchecked, with city planners and politicians doing little to ensure transport infrastructure keeps pace. The last few years have seen a significant spurt in migration to the MMR, the stretch north and north-east of Thane, particularly from Kalwa to Kalyan, including Mumbra, where the accident took place. Commuting here is a struggle, and it's only getting worse. While the Central Railway needs urgent upgrades, roads are buckling under pressure, the metro hasn't yet arrived, and public transport is failing.

And, yet, the population is steadily rising.