Railway Safety: No More Lapses, Please

The Balasore accident shows that simple steps like faster tech adoption can help avoid a tragedy, say experts

- MANISH PANT

ALPO ALPO MEGH theke halka bristi hoy / Chhotto chhotto golpo theke bhalobasa sristi hoy (Fluffy clouds lead to gentle rains/Love blossoms from tiny tales) reads one of the several pages of handwritten Bengali poems by an unknown passenger, discovered amid the mangled train coaches at the accident site in Balasore district. And like the gathering clouds that lead to a storm, it is the neglect of safety protocols that, bit by bit, culminate in a tragedy like the triple-train accident of June 2.

The incident at Bahanaga Bazar station in Odisha involving three trains—the Coromandel Express, SMVT Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express, and a freight train—left 288 passengers dead and over 1,000 injured. The initial assessment of an alleged criminal neglect of standard operating procedures (SOPs) was corroborated at the highest levels of the Indian Railways, including by Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. The Central Bureau of Investigation is currently investigating the matter.

Prima facie the accident appears to have occurred because the Coromandel Express entered a loop line—a section of track built to ease rail operations—and hit a stationary goods train. The derailed carriages of the Coromandel Express then hit the tail-end bogies of the Bengaluru-Howrah Superfast Express that was passing on the down line. “The resulting triple accident is one of the rarest of the rare instances in rail transport,” avers safety expert Lalit Chandra Trivedi, who retired as General Manager of East Central Railways.