India railway: 15,000 deaths a year 'like massacre'

[John Ashworth]

India railway failings 'like massacre'

BBC 20 February 2012 Last updated at 16:09

Lax safety standards on India's railway lines have caused thousands of deaths, a government committee has said, calling the deaths a "massacre".

The committee said 15,000 people are killed by trains every year trying to cross tracks that are not fenced off.

Almost half of the deaths occur in Mumbai, where the report said there were not enough pedestrian crossings.

The report criticised state-owned railway network India Railways for failing to implement safety measures.

It called for urgent investment to prevent the "unacceptable massacre".

The BBC's Rajesh Joshi in Delhi says that the report has come down heavily on Indian Railways. It argues that no civilised society can accept such high casualty levels.

The group of experts on the committee noted that Indian Railways is reluctant to acknowledge the deaths as train accidents.

But it has emphasised they were accidents and that they were caused by trains.

The government appointed the group of experts to review railway safety measures in the face of a growing number of casualties in recent years.

The committee, headed by one of the country's foremost scientists, Anil Kakodkar, says people cross railway tracks unlawfully because there are not enough foot bridges provided.

Another contributory factor is inadequate fencing adjacent to the tracks.

The committee has recommended that a high-level task force - involving state governments and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) - should be set up to address the issue.

[John Ashworth]

15,000 die on Indian railways every year

ANDREW BUNCOMBE DELHI WEDNESDAY 22 FEBRUARY 2012
The Independent

As anyone who has ever travelled by train in India is more than aware, when one visits the lavatory there is little between oneself and the rattling tracks below.

Not so obvious, perhaps, is the revelation that each time one uses the loo, it makes the railways a little more unsafe. The acidic content of what gets flushed, it turns out, steadily corrodes the tracks, making them unstable and unreliable.

The finding, and the recommendation that railways in India should be equipped with toilets that do not discharge directly onto the tracks, was among the contents of a report made by experts reviewing safety on the trains.

The committee said Indian Railways – which has an estimated 1.5m staff and is among the world’s largest employers – has much to do. The committee found that every year around people 15,000 die on the railways and described those fatalities as a “massacre” that was being ignored by railway authorities. About 6,000 people die on Mumbai’s crowded suburban rail network alone.

“No civilised society can accept such a massacre on their railway system,” the report said, referring to the deaths of people crossing the tracks. “Reluctance of the Indian railways to own up to the casualties, which do not fall under the purview of accidents, but are nevertheless accidents on account of trains, can by no means be ignored.”

One member of the investigation committee told the Indian Express newspaper that human excrement has corroded a significant percentage of the country’s 70,000 miles of tracks. Dr Anil Kakodkar, head of the committee, told the newspaper: “It is one of the life limiting factors...because of the pH content of the toilet discharge, there is widespread corrosion of the rails. These toilets need to be discontinued. We also found that maintenance workers often refuse to service the undercarriage of the trains because discharge from toilets makes the undercarriage extremely dirty.”

The review committee was set up by the government last September after a spate of train accidents. An estimated 20 million people in India travel by train every day. The report called on the government to urgently replace all railroad crossings with bridges or overpasses over the next five years.