What are the stressors facing Indian Railways?

Rave News

On October 11, 2024, Mysuru-Darbanga Express was hit by a stationary freight train at Kavaraipettai railway station near Gummidipoondi. Photo credit: B. Jothi Ramalingam

Story so far: On October 17, eight coaches of the Agartala-Lokmanya Tilak Express derailed in Assam. No one was injured. On October 11, a passenger train collided with a stationary freight train near Chennai, causing no casualties. There have been many accidents involving Indian trains recently. The Balasore accident on June 2, 2023 caused the highest death toll of over 275 people, but the pressure on the railways to improve safety is as much as to stay afloat.

How common are accidents?

The number of rail accidents has dropped from 1,390 per year in the 1960s to 80 per year in the past decade. There are still 34 indirect accidents in 2021-2022, 48 in 2022-23, and 40 in 2023-2024. Indirect accidents can cause injury and/or death, damage rail infrastructure and disrupt rail traffic.

According to public records, 55.8% of all train accidents are caused by railway staff errors, and the remaining 28.4% are caused by non-staff errors. Equipment failure accounted for 6.2%. In both the Balasore and Kawalepatei accidents, officials blamed the signaling system.

What is “Kavachi”?

The “Kavach” automatic train protection system is designed to prevent collisions, using equipment that allows pilots to track the relative position of vehicles and activate alerts and automatic braking protocols.

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As of February 2024, the railway company has installed “Kavach” on 1,465 kilometers of lines, accounting for 2% of its total line length. After the Balasore incident, Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that “Kavach” will be implemented in “mission mode”. The cost per kilometer is Rs 50 lakh and the cost per locomotive is Rs 70 lakh. Analysis by hinduismThe total implementation cost over ten years was found to be less than 2% of the railway’s annual capital expenditure. Officials pushed back on years of declines in accident rates and fatalities when faced with criticism of slow implementation. But experts say it’s a mistake to compare current and past crash rates because advanced safety technology didn’t exist in the early days and the government now has ways to eliminate crashes.

Since 1990-1991, railroads have classified nearly 70% of major accidents as derailments, but only 2% were due to collisions. “Kavach” may also be unable to prevent Kavaraipettai incidents because the associated errors occur beyond the minimum required for “Kavach” to assist.

What is the operating ratio?

The operating ratio (OR) (how much a railway company earns Rs 100 in expenses) is expected to be Rs 98.2 in 2024-2025, a slight improvement from 2023-2024 (Rs 98.7) but down from Rs 97.8 in 2016. Less capital expenditure is left and railways are more dependent on budgetary support and extra-budgetary resources (EBR). In 2016-2017, the BJP government brought the railway budget into the regular budget after nine decades of separation. One result is that railroads have easier access to general budget support. As for EBR: Railroad dues have surged as a share of its revenue from 10% in 2015 to 2016 to 17% today.

How is the freight service going?

The two main internal sources of revenue for railroads are passenger services and freight. The latter accounts for 65%. NITI Aayog estimates that while revenue from both sources is increasing, freight rates grew more than three times faster than passenger rates from 2009 to 2019.

According to the draft national railway plan, nearly 30% of the railway network has a utilization rate of more than 100%. This has resulted in slow freight speeds (around 26 km/h in 2016) and slower revenue growth. Of the Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFCs) proposed by the government in 2005, only the Eastern DFC is fully operational. The western DFC is partially ready; the east coast, east-west sub-corridor, and north-south sub-corridor DFC are still under planning, with a total length of 3,958 kilometers. Freight revenue also depends on the freight basket. In the 2024-2025 budget estimates, coal accounts for half of freight revenue and 45% of freight volumes. However, the government has been adding more renewable energy while pushing industries to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels such as coal.

Railways also need to maintain existing equipment, including replacing track and wagons and repairing trackside infrastructure. But in the 2023-2024 budget, capital expenditure on track renewal fell to 7.2%. Allocations to the Depreciation Reserve Fund also fell by 96% during the BJP’s first term; the government has shifted these resources to the Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh Security Fund created in 2017-2018. The latter will then be unable to meet the costs of repairing or replacing depreciating assets, the Railway Standing Committee said.

What is the revenue status of passenger services?

The railroad’s freight profits were offset by passenger losses. In 2019-2020, revenue from passenger services was a little over Rs 50,000 crore and losses were Rs 63,364 crore. 2021-2022 was the year of the pandemic and many trains had to be canceled and passenger services suffered a loss of Rs 68,269 crore. In a July 2024 analysis, PRL Legislative Research estimated revenue from passenger services at Rs 800 billion in 2024-2025.

PRL also estimates railway passenger traffic at 1.1 million passenger kilometers, which is expected to increase to 1.24 million kilometers by 2024-2025 due to the addition of new trains on high passenger traffic routes, including Vande Bharat trains. Railways have also replaced many cheaper sleeper and second-class coaches with more expensive air-conditioned coaches, all in an effort to increase passenger revenue. However, it last rationalized passenger fares in 2020.

How is security affected?

Railways has long been caught between two aspirations: providing affordable travel options to the people of India and becoming a profitable enterprise.

Increases in salary and pension costs, as well as fuel costs, have added to rail companies’ losses. Locomotive pilots also reported stressful working conditions, including 12-hour shifts (especially in areas with high freight volumes) and constantly changing standard operating procedures.

The limited usefulness of “Kavach” and the failure of indigenous walkie-talkie-based systems to alert trackside staff of incoming trains are also evidence of the high level of network congestion. Mr Vaishnaw told the House of Commons in 2023: “The system is not functioning adequately… multiple trains are spaced very closely within a block and signals are 1km apart.” All in all, the railways are unable to generate the revenue to make up for the shortfall in overall budgetary support, which is critical to the overall budget support. The growing need for its revenue, along with increasing pressure to ease congestion and improve physical capabilities, means it is constantly playing catch-up.

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