What are the depressing aspects of Indian Railways?

The Mysuru-Darbanga Express rammed into a freight train at Kavaraipettai railway station near Gummidipoondi in Chennai Division of Southern Railway late on October 11, 2024. | Photo Credit: B. Jothi Ramalingam

The story so far: On October 17, eight coaches of the Agartala-Lokmanya Tilak Express left Assam unharmed. On October 11, a passenger train hit a freight train near Chennai, also causing accidents. Indian railways have been involved in many accidents recently. The Balasore accident on June 2, 2023, had a huge death toll, over 275, yet the pressure on the Railways to improve safety is competing with pressures on livelihoods.

How common are accidents?

The number of train accidents fell from 1,390 a year in the 1960s to 80 a year in the last decade. There were still 34 accidents in 2021-2022, 48 in 2022-23, and 40 in 2023-2024. The resulting accident injures and/or kills people, damages railway infrastructure, and disrupts train operations.

According to public records, 55.8% of all accidents involving trains were caused by the failure of Railway employees and the other 28.4% were caused by the failure of non-employees. Equipment failure accounted for 6.2%. In both the Balasore and Kavaraipettai accidents, officials blamed the demonstration system.

What is ‘Kavach’?

The ‘Kavach’ automated train protection system is designed to prevent collisions using devices that allow pilots to track the relative position of their vehicles and can trigger alarms and automatic braking procedures.

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By February 2024, the Railways had installed ‘Kavach’ on 1,465 km, or 2% of its route length. After the Balasore accident, Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that ‘Kavach’ would be operated in “mechanical mode”. It costs Rs 50 lakh per kilometer and Rs 70 lakh per train. Analysis by A Hindufound that the total cost of implementation over ten years is less than 2% of the annual capex of the Railways. In the face of criticism of slow implementation, officials have reversed the decline in accidents and deaths over the years. But experts said comparing current accident rates with past rates is unfair because advanced safety technology was not available before and the government has ways today to eliminate crashes.

As of 1990-1991, the Railways classified nearly 70 percent of all major accidents as derailments, but only 2 percent of them were due to collisions. ‘Kavach’ also may not have prevented the Kavaraipettai accident because the relevant error has occurred beyond the minimum limit of ‘Kavach’ needing to help.

What is the performance ratio?

The operating ratio (OR) — the amount Railways spends to earn ₹100 — in 2024-2025 is estimated at R98.2, a slight improvement from 2023-2024 (₹98.7) but down from R97.8 in 2016 . OR leaves little to capex and Railways is heavily dependent on budgetary support and Extra Budgetary Resources (EBRs). In 2016-2017, the BJP government brought the railway budget under the regular budget after ninety years of separation. Another result was easier access for Railways to full budget support. Regarding EBRs: Railways’ dues have reached 17% of its revenue receipts today from 10% in 2015-2016.

How are the logistics services going?

The two main sources of internal revenue of Railways are passenger and freight services. The latter make up 65%. While revenue from both sources grew, freight rates rose more than three times faster than passenger rates in 2009-2019, NITI Aayog estimated.

According to the National Rail Framework Plan, about 30 percent of the railroads are powered by more than 100 percent. This has translated into slower freight movement – ​​around 26 km/hr in 2016 – and slower revenue growth. Of the Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFCs) that the government announced in 2005, only the eastern DFC is fully operational. The western DFC is partially ready; the east coast, a small east-west corridor, and the DFCs from north-south, up to 3,958 km, are still being planned. Commodity income also depends on the basket of goods. Coal accounted for half of the commodity revenue and 45% of the volume in the budget estimate for 2024-2025. However, the government has been adding more renewable energy sources while pushing industries to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels, including coal.

Railways also need to maintain existing equipment, including replacing tracks and wagons and maintaining trackside infrastructure. But in the 2023-2024 budget, spending on track renewal has dropped to 7.2%. The Depreciation Reserve Fund also fell by 96% in the first term of the BJP; the government has transferred these resources to the Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh security fund created in 2017-2018. The Standing Committee on Railways said that the Railways will not be able to pay to repair or replace the depreciating equipment.

What about passenger services revenue?

The profitability of the Railways is greatly reduced by the loss of passengers. In 2019-2020, the revenue from passenger services was a little over ₹50,000 crore and the loss, ₹63,364 crore. In 2021-2022 – a pandemic year in which many trains had to be canceled – passenger services incurred a loss of Rs 68,269 crore. In a July 2024 analysis, PRL Legal Research estimated revenue from passenger services at Rs80,000 crore in 2024-2025.

The PRL has also estimated that the Railways has a ridership of about 11 lakh passenger km, which is expected to rise to 12.4 lakh by 2024-2025 due to the addition of new trains – including Vande Bharats – on congested routes. The Railways has also replaced multi-ticket coaches and second-class tickets with the more expensive AC coaches, all to increase passenger fares. However, it ended up balancing passenger fares in 2020.

How is safety affected?

The Railways has long been caught between two ambitions: providing an accessible travel option to the people of India versus being a profitable business.

The losses of the Railways are compounded by rising wage and pension arrears and fuel costs. Train drivers have reported stressful working conditions, including 12-hour shifts, particularly in areas with high freight volumes, and changing standard operating procedures.

The high density of the network is also evidenced by the limited use of ‘Kavach’ and the failure of the domestic system, based on walkie-talkies, to warn trackside staff of oncoming trains. “The system is not fully functional … when many trains run in the same area at close intervals and the signals are placed 1 km apart,” Mr. Vaishnaw told the Rajya Sabha in 2023. In short, the inability of the Railways’ revenue to cover gaps in overall budget support, the increasing demands on its revenue receipts, and the growing pressure to reduce congestion and improve physical capacity mean that it is constantly playing catch-up.