Balasore train tragedy exposes crying need for railway safety upgrade

The terrible train mishap at Odisha’s Balasore has exposed the grim reality that despite some improvement in recent years, the Indian Railways’ safety infrastructure and systems aren’t yet foolproof.

It showed that at least in some sections, facilities are still so decrepit that even the signalling and parallel locking systems, the rudiments of safety features, can fail.

Also read: Electronic interlocking ‘root cause’ for Odisha accident? What Ashwini Vaishnaw says

For decades on, the transporter, which practically makes no operational surplus, had been starving the corpus for improving maintenance and replenishment of its existing assets – the depreciation-reserve and safety funds.

For fresh capital expenditure, it had no option but to resort to the Union budget and market borrowings, as private investments were hard to come by.

In recent years, capex has seen a huge jump, thanks to higher gross budget support (GBS). A fiscally prudent centre has even reduced off-budget (IRFC) borrowings of late while sustaining the rise in budget support.

The Narendra Modi government set up the Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh (RRSK), a new omnibus safety fund, for the Railways in 2017-18 with a spending plan of Rs 1 trillion over five years. The main contribution (75%) to the RRSK was from the Budget and the railways was to bear 25% cost.

In the five-year period till 2021-22, Rs 74,176 crore was spent out of the RRSK, with the Railways’ own contribution at just Rs 4,200 crore.

Since 2022-23, the size of the RRSK has fallen (see chart), even as the focus on capex has increased sharply.

The government is reworking the terms of public private partnership (PPP) model for various railway projects to make it more attractive to private investors and bridge a viability gap. A lot of attention is being paid to redevelopment and upgrade of stations – 1,300 stations are to be modernised in the current fiscal under the Amrit Bharat scheme with Rs 13,000 crore budget capex support. However, the latest accident, which killed 288 people, and left over 900 injured, underscores the need for increased budgetary focus on safety infrastructure and upkeep.

At the end of the term of RRSK, it got an extension in 2022-23 with reduced outlay – Rs 45,000 crore for five years. A provision of Rs 11,000 crore was made for 2022-23 and a similar spend is envisaged for the current fiscal.

The RRSK was created with a vision to have a single head in order to cater to all safety-related needs of the railways by dissolving various safety related funds.

Also read: Odisha train accident: Indian Railways to install anti-collision device ‘Kavach’ in trains by next year

The primary focus of the RRSK is reduction of collisions, derailments and railway crossing accidents. The major heads of expenditure of the fund is track renewals, signalling, and telecommunication works, road overbridges and rolling stock.

Apart from safety-related track renewals, the Railways spends considerable sums on new lines, gauge conversion and track renewal.

During 2022-23, 5,227 km of complete track renewal units are carried out. In the last 10 years around 37,159 km of track renewal has been carried out.