Near Zero Accidents Regime: Can Indian Railways do it?

Dr. Sudhanshu Mani, Written March 25, updated Oct. 26

 A Safety Record Worth Acknowledging

The last major accident on Indian Railways (IR) was the Chhattisgarh train collision, which occurred on November 4, 2025, nearly a year ago. The accident resulted in the deaths of 11 passengers, including the loco pilot, and injuries to 20 passengers. A quick look shows that there have been fewer than 10 fatalities in rail accidents since then, excluding cases of people being run over or falling from trains. I am saying this without minutely studying the data, but I certainly do not remember any period with such a low number of fatalities in railway accidents in a year.

This is a performance the Railway Ministry should be proclaiming all over the media, including the reel regime of today, instead of going overboard about incomplete projects, projected possibilities and various vanity accomplishments. It is a record one can be genuinely proud of. This is not a claim that all risks have been eliminated, but a recognition of measurable progress.

Unlike ten years ago, every major railway accident brings IR’s safety into public focus. The media, particularly social media, can fuel a perception that the network is unsafe. The challenge is to sustain public attention long enough to learn from evidence rather than merely react to the latest tragedy.

One fact is often lost in the noise: IR’s safety record has improved substantially over the decades. Consequential accidents and annual fatalities have fallen markedly, from hundreds of deaths a year to around ten. It is neither sensible nor fair to portray these gains as limited. A railway operating across a vast geography and carrying enormous traffic has achieved genuine improvements.

This progress reflects the sustained efforts of successive administrations, governments, engineers and frontline staff. Key contributors include eliminating unmanned level crossings, renewing track, improving inspections and signalling, and strengthening bridges. Replacing older rolling stock with Linke-Hofmann-Busch (LHB) coaches, which are less prone to telescoping during derailments, has limited the consequences of accidents. Vande Bharat trainsets incorporate further safety advances, while greater capital investment over the past decade has accelerated essential infrastructure work. While massive investments in recent years have certainly hastened the process, these gains are cumulative, not the achievement of one government or one technology; they depend on sustained upkeep and consistent implementation.

IR should publicise its safety performance far more effectively. The Ministry should explain the trends in accessible language; safety achievements deserve at least as much attention as new trains and redeveloped stations.

The public must, however, be given the full picture. Statistics should be defined consistently and distinguish consequential accidents, train-accident fatalities, deaths from being run over, and falls from trains. Combining or separating categories without explanation can mislead. Comparisons should specify the period, traffic carried and measures used.

A run of good results does not mean every risk has disappeared, just as a tragedy does not erase years of progress. Pride should be a platform for ambition, not a curtain concealing uncomfortable facts. The right response is to ask what improved the record, where risks remain and how the next stage of safety can be secured.

Safety Cannot Be Achieved Through Knee-Jerk Restrictions

Whenever a serious accident occurs, instructions pour out. Trains may be ordered to run more slowly, inspections increased without a clear risk assessment, or duties added to staff who lack the tools or competence to perform them. Such orders create an impression of urgency but do not necessarily address the cause. 

Speed reduction is tempting because it is visible and easy to announce. A temporary restriction may be justified, but a blanket reduction unrelated to a specific risk cannot replace the correction of the underlying defect. The proposed increase in passenger-train speeds from 130 to 160 kmph has stalled over safety concerns. Loaded freight-train speeds were reduced to 65 kmph when failures started getting reported on the bogie-mounted brake system. This was a knee-jerk response, and although the speed has been restored, the plans that were underway and trials completed to raise the speed from 75 to 100 kmph are in cold storage. On saturated tracks, reducing the speed differential between passenger and freight trains to improve overall average speeds is more important than increasing the speed of particular passenger trains for mobility and capacity; in effect, that differential has increased, not decreased.

The objective should be not to choose between speed and safety, but to provide the infrastructure, signalling, rolling stock and operating systems that allow trains to run safely at appropriate speeds.

Modern signalling can improve protection and capacity by giving drivers reliable information and helping trains move efficiently. Track renewal, sound geometry and switches, adequate drainage, bridge rehabilitation, fencing and elimination of level crossings can strengthen safety while improving performance.

New trains and modern stations should not be set against safety, as if the railway must choose between visible progress and essential protection. New rolling stock can itself improve safety, comfort and resilience, but publicity must not obscure the less glamorous work of renewing track, upgrading signalling, inspecting bridges and maintaining equipment. Workshops, competent inspection, tools and protected maintenance windows matter as much as headline projects. The two priorities complement each other.

Maintenance intervals must be governed by engineering evidence, not panic. If an investigation finds that an inspection was missed, compliance must be addressed; if an interval is inadequate for actual conditions, it should be revised. Shortening every interval after an accident can waste scarce resources and obscure the technical cause.

Equipment is designed to operate for specified periods between examinations. This does not justify neglect: schedules must reflect design, condition, failure history, usage, manufacturer guidance and engineering judgement. Condition monitoring can identify deterioration between examinations. The question is which inspection or intervention would have detected the defect in time, not how many extra checks can be announced. Risk-based schedules should distinguish safety-critical components from those whose failure has limited consequences. A uniform response to unlike risks is rarely good engineering.

If a locomotive component’s mounting or weld fails, asking the loco pilot to inspect it repeatedly during a journey may show activity without improving safety. A hidden defect may require the locomotive to be positioned over an inspection pit. Drivers should perform checks appropriate to their role; technical examinations belong to trained maintenance staff with the right equipment.

After a derailment caused by a track defect, the railway must establish what failed, how long the defect existed, why inspections missed it, whether maintenance blocks were adequate and whether management acted on warnings. If a manufacturing defect is involved, design, fabrication, quality assurance and maintenance history must also be examined. Corrective action must follow evidence.

Interim instructions should have a clear purpose, a responsible owner, a review date and a path to a durable solution. Temporary restrictions must not become substitutes for investment or engineering judgement. A measure should be judged by whether it reduces risk, not by how quickly or sternly it is announced. Any restriction should therefore be proportionate to the risk, monitored for effectiveness and withdrawn or replaced when the underlying problem is resolved.

From Improved Safety to a Zero-Accident Ambition

A declining accident rate is an achievement, but not a final destination. IR should aim for a near-zero-accident regime, with zero fatalities as the overriding aspiration. This must guide investment, maintenance, technology, staffing, training, accountability and daily operations, rather than become another slogan.

No complex transport system can promise that human error, equipment failure, extreme weather or deliberate criminal acts will never occur. A zero-accident ambition means systematically reducing foreseeable risks, designing barriers against error, learning from near misses and preventing one failure from cascading into catastrophe. The question is not whether people will make mistakes, but whether the system can detect or contain them before harm occurs.

Technology makes a higher standard possible. Automatic train protection, reliable signalling, real-time monitoring, sound maintenance and analysis of operating data can reduce risks once accepted as unavoidable. Safety should not depend entirely on an individual being alert every second or overcoming every operational pressure. Human competence remains essential, but technology must add layers of protection.

Kavach, India’s indigenous automatic train-protection system, can intervene when conditions become unsafe and help prevent certain collisions. Its promise depends on timely deployment, reliable infrastructure, trained users and consistent operation. Equipping locomotives alone does not create a functioning route-wide system: trackside equipment, telecommunications, optical fibre, radio infrastructure and control arrangements must be commissioned as a coherent whole. Equipment must be interoperable, tested under real operating conditions and supported by dependable maintenance. Deployment figures alone cannot establish operational effectiveness.

Kavach needs a clear, credible and publicly reviewable roadmap. Busy trunk routes and automatic-signalling territories deserve priority because collisions there can have severe consequences. Annual targets should be ambitious but realistic, with industrial capacity constraints addressed through long-term partnerships rather than invoked indefinitely. Any further development needed should be transparent. Progress should be reported against route kilometres made operational, not simply equipment ordered or installed. Transparent milestones would make delays visible and permit corrective action.

Artificial intelligence offers another opportunity. IR holds extensive digital information in station data loggers, signalling systems, locomotive microprocessors, train equipment and maintenance records. Much remains in separate departmental systems and is examined mainly after incidents. Near misses are rarely analysed as systematically as they should be, while humans cannot manually collate every data stream across the network quickly enough to identify emerging risks.

A well-designed AI platform could flag unusual signal sequences, recurring faults, abnormal braking, repeated failures at a location or signs of deferred maintenance. It could alert responsible officials and escalate persistent risks to senior management, including DRMs and GMs. AI should support, not replace, professional judgement. Its value lies in helping railwaymen identify patterns and act before a near miss becomes an accident.

Stop Using Sabotage as a Diversion

A recurring diversion is to attribute suspicious incidents to sabotage before the evidence is established. Deliberate interference with railway infrastructure is possible and serious; credible threats must be investigated professionally by the police and security agencies. It would be irresponsible to dismiss sabotage in advance. 

It is equally irresponsible to announce sabotage prematurely after a major accident whose cause is unknown. An object on a track, signal irregularity, vandalism, stone pelting, theft or suspicious obstruction may warrant investigation, but these events are not equivalent. A list of disparate incidents does not prove a coordinated conspiracy, nor does a dramatic label establish that an act could have caused a derailment.

Some incidents that attract sensational attention have proved to be mischief, juvenile criminality, theft or fabrication by railway employees seeking personal advantage. In reported cases, staff have planted material to claim a safety award, while a disgruntled employee placed detonators on a track. Such acts are serious and must be punished. Calling them sophisticated anti-national plots before facts emerge distorts the problem and can divert attention from the real cause.

The correct approach is disciplined restraint: secure the site, preserve evidence, involve the appropriate agencies and allow technical and criminal investigations to proceed. If evidence establishes a conspiracy, say so and prosecute the perpetrators. If it points to mischief or an ordinary crime, report that. If the cause remains uncertain, officials should acknowledge uncertainty rather than fill the gap with speculation.

Premature claims can prejudice an inquiry, create panic and damage institutional credibility if the initial explanation proves wrong. They can also provide an escape from uncomfortable operational questions. Attention fixed on an alleged external enemy may discourage examination of maintenance failures, defective procedures, inadequate training, poor supervision or managerial indifference.

The Chandigarh-Dibrugarh Express derailment near Gonda in July 2024, which caused casualties, illustrates why evidence must lead the narrative. In this and other cases, the CRS identified failures within the railway’s own engineering or operating arrangements. Early suggestions of sabotage risked diverting attention towards a dramatic external explanation instead of confronting possible railway responsibility.

This does not mean staff should be discouraged from reporting suspicious activity. They should be trained to identify threats, and credible reports should receive prompt attention. Patrolling, intelligence-sharing, protection of vulnerable locations and cooperation with law enforcement all matter, but must complement, not replace, ordinary safety work.

The railway must resist turning every event into a contest between patriotic vigilance and internal culpability. A serious investigation is neither anti-railway nor anti-government; it is essential to learning and prevention. Accountability for sabotage and for preventable maintenance or operating failures are not mutually exclusive. Thankfully, the trend of blaming accidents to sabotage has receded in the past couple of years.

CRS Recommendations in Spirit, Not in Words

The Commissioner of Railway Safety occupies a crucial position. CRS inquiries are not formalities after a tragedy, nor reports from which management may select convenient sentences. They establish causes, identify deficiencies and recommend measures to prevent recurrence. Recommendations must be considered in context and implemented in spirit, not selectively.

Too often, an organisation responds to a critical report with an instruction that is easy to count but does little to reduce risk. A recommendation for Kavach cannot be considered fulfilled because locomotive equipment has been ordered or fitted while trackside infrastructure remains incomplete. More frequent inspections are no answer if they cannot detect the defect; another circular cannot resolve unclear procedures unless staff understand and can follow them.

After each CRS report, management should ask: what risk was identified, what barrier failed, and what change will prevent recurrence? Every recommendation needs a responsible authority, deadline, resources, measurable completion criteria and, where appropriate, independent verification. Rejection or modification should be justified transparently with technical evidence. Silence, vague assurances or a statement that a matter is under examination do not constitute implementation.

Recommendations must be assessed for systemic implications. A problem found at one location may exist across a zone or the network. If a signalling procedure is unsafe, identify where else it is used; if a component fails, review similar equipment and design or manufacturing controls. Where shortcuts recur, management must examine why they became normal and why supervision failed.

Lessons must not fade when public pressure eases. After the Balasore collision in June 2023, important questions concerned signalling-circuit integrity, verification of modifications, testing, responses to unusual indications and maintenance management. The broader lesson is that technical changes require disciplined control and rigorous verification. Errors introduced during modifications can remain hidden if paperwork replaces independent checks and physical confirmation.

Track-maintenance recommendations should trigger scrutiny of maintenance blocks, inspection quality, defect histories and renewal backlogs. Training recommendations should be followed by evidence that staff can demonstrate competence. Completion must be measured by risk reduced, not circulars issued.

There must be accountability for repeated failure to implement accepted recommendations. Difficult, expensive or complex work may require a phased programme, but not indefinite postponement. Management must own accepted recommendations; technical disagreements should be resolved through transparent expert scrutiny. The Railway Board should periodically publish summaries of recommendations, action taken, pending items, reasons for delay and evidence used to close them. Without compromising investigations or sensitive security information, this would help Parliament, railway employees and the public distinguish progress from bureaucratic compliance. A public dashboard could show progress without disclosing sensitive operational details. It would also discourage the familiar practice of treating an accepted recommendation as complete once correspondence has been exchanged.

Safety Culture Means More Than Issuing Instructions

The deepest requirement is a safety culture, a phrase that risks becoming decorative when repeated in speeches and circulars. A real safety culture exists when everyone, from the newest track worker to the highest executive, treats safety as a daily responsibility and reports inconvenient facts rather than concealing them. Near misses deserve particular attention: a narrowly avoided collision, signal irregularity, component close to failure or recurring defect is valuable evidence. If reporting brings blame or paperwork without action, staff will stay silent. Reporting must be easy, protect good-faith reporters, analyse patterns and show what changed as a result.

Safety is not created by declaring it paramount. It exists when a pointsman can report an unsafe instruction, a maintainer can insist on a proper block, and a loco pilot can report a defect without fear of casual blame. Deliberate negligence, shortcuts and falsified records must, meanwhile, attract fair and consistent consequences.

Railway operations involve competing pressures: trains must run, freight move, passengers expect punctuality, and maintenance windows are limited on busy routes. A safety culture recognises these pressures but prevents them from overriding safe-working rules. If a timetable cannot be maintained safely, the timetable or infrastructure must change, not the rules.

Leadership must set the example. Senior managers cannot preach compliance while denying staff the time, resources or access needed to work safely, or invite candid reporting and then punish those who disclose bad news. They must visit worksites, listen to frontline staff and follow up on obstacles. This is a practical way to uncover risks that reports and dashboards may miss. Site visits should be purposeful: managers should examine actual working conditions, ask staff what is difficult to do safely and ensure that identified problems receive resources and deadlines.

The distinction between individual error and organisational failure matters. If someone violates a clear rule despite proper training, equipment, supervision and time, accountability is appropriate. But if rules are ambiguous, procedures impracticable, training inadequate, equipment defective or shortcuts routinely tolerated, blaming the last person in the chain is insufficient. A just culture distinguishes honest error from recklessness while examining the conditions that made failure possible.

The Kanchenjunga Express collision in June 2024 drew attention to train handling in automatic-signalling territory when the normal system is disrupted. Preliminary findings raised questions about instructions, communication and procedural clarity as well as individual actions. Inconsistent subsidiary rules can leave staff making critical decisions under pressure. Clear, harmonised procedures and realistic training are safety measures, not administrative niceties. Staff must know precisely what to do when normal signalling arrangements fail, and exercises should test whether the instructions remain workable under pressure.

Shortages of staff in safety-critical categories, including loco crew, station masters, pointsmen and signal maintainers, can strain those who remain. Vacancies should be assessed by category, workload, route conditions and operational risk, not by sweeping claims that the railway is overstaffed or understaffed. Critical vacancies must be filled promptly, alongside sustained attention to training and competence. Staffing assessments should also account for leave, training, rest requirements and local traffic complexity, rather than relying only on sanctioned-post totals.

Training cannot be reduced to a signature on a register. Staff need regular practice in abnormal and emergency situations, including failures of signalling, communications, equipment and infrastructure. They must understand why procedures exist, not merely memorise steps. Simulation, case studies, joint exercises and learning from real incidents help staff respond when events depart from the expected pattern. Refresher training should be based on identified weaknesses and include assessment, not merely attendance. Competence must be demonstrated and maintained.

Engineering Discipline, Not Theatre

Safety is delivered through thousands of technical and operational decisions. Track must meet specifications; signals must display correctly; interlocking must prevent conflicting routes; locomotive components must be designed, made, fitted and inspected properly; coaches must meet structural and fire-safety requirements. Staff need training and workable procedures. No slogan substitutes for these essentials.

Track maintenance needs time and resources. Where required, renewals must cover the whole track structure, including rails, sleepers, ballast, drainage and switches, rather than treating replacement of one component as complete rehabilitation. Ultrasonic testing and other inspections must be effective, and detected defects followed through to closure. Bridges need systematic assessment and timely rehabilitation; fencing and grade separation can reduce risks at vulnerable locations and crossings. This work may lack the spectacle of a train launch, but is fundamental to safety. Maintenance plans should be based on condition and risk, with defects prioritised and temporary repairs monitored until permanent work is completed.

Rolling stock requires equal rigour. The transition from older coach designs should continue in a planned way, prioritising faster services where derailment consequences may be greater. Modern coaches with better anti-climbing and crashworthiness can limit harm when prevention fails, but these advantages depend on manufacturing quality, correct assembly, maintenance and fire safety. Specifications offer little protection if series production is inadequately tested or substandard material accepted. Fire performance and evacuation arrangements deserve particular attention because crashworthiness alone cannot prevent every form of harm.

Quality assurance must continue beyond prototype approval. Suppliers must demonstrate that they can maintain standards in serial production, and inspection must identify defects rather than simply validate delivery targets. Repeated failures should prompt scrutiny of design, materials, processes and inspection, not just replacement of the failed part. Lessons should be shared across production units, workshops and depots. Independent checks are especially important where production pressure or delivery deadlines could compromise acceptance standards.

Rapid deployment of safety systems requires a stable roadmap and credible commitments that justify suppliers’ investment in capacity. If procurement is repeatedly delayed or requirements keep changing, the resulting bottleneck cannot be treated as an unavoidable external constraint. Safety-critical programmes require coordinated planning among railway departments, suppliers and testing agencies. Planning must therefore connect policy announcements to realistic testing, procurement, production and commissioning schedules.

IR should learn from international practice without assuming imported systems are automatically superior or indigenous systems beyond scrutiny. Vande Bharat and Kavach are significant domestic achievements; further development can strengthen national capability. Pride should encourage rigorous testing, reliable deployment and improvement, not discourage questions about performance. Safety is not a contest in national branding but an obligation to passengers and railway employees. Indigenous capability is valuable precisely because it gives IR the opportunity to improve systems continuously and adapt them to Indian operating conditions.

From Reaction to a Lasting Safety Culture

IR must neither congratulate itself uncritically nor condemn itself indiscriminately. It should use an improved record as a foundation for progress, acknowledge what has worked, publicise evidence responsibly and focus on remaining risks.

A zero-accident ambition demands three disciplines: use technology intelligently through effective automatic protection, data analysis and condition monitoring; strengthen fundamentals through infrastructure renewal, rolling-stock maintenance, training, critical staffing and adequate time for safe work; and build a culture in which evidence prevails over optics, staff report danger, management accepts responsibility and CRS recommendations produce demonstrable change. These disciplines must be supported by reliable budgets, clear responsibility and review at senior levels; otherwise, each remains an aspiration rather than a working programme.

This approach rejects both knee-jerk restrictions and complacency. Slow trains when a specific risk requires it, not as a substitute for engineering. Revise maintenance intervals when evidence supports it, not indiscriminately to signal seriousness. Investigate credible sabotage, but do not inflate mischief into conspiracy to divert attention from railway failures. A report is not acted upon until the underlying risk is reduced.

The Railway Ministry has every reason to communicate the improvement confidently, but must also tell the public what remains unfinished, how quickly it will act and how progress will be measured. Institutions lose authority not by acknowledging shortcomings but by claiming success before the work is done.

IR is too important to measure itself only against its own past. It must judge itself against what modern engineering, technology and disciplined management make possible. Zero accidents may never be fully attainable in a system of this scale, but the effort to approach that goal must be relentless. Every preventable accident is one too many; every death demands an honest examination of what more could have been done. The public conversation should recognise improvement without treating the past as the limit of what is possible.

The final test is not the strength of a press statement, the severity of a circular or the number of projects announced. It is whether a risk identified today is removed before tomorrow’s train encounters it. That requires patience, persistence, courage and a willingness to confront unwelcome evidence. Safety must be the standard governing every decision, every day, not a campaign launched after an accident.

A near-zero-accident regime will not arrive through one system or a single large budget. It will emerge from many well-designed safeguards implemented consistently.

Shakespeare offers a fitting final thought in Julius Caesar: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” For IR, the tide is the opportunity offered by modern technology, investment and accumulated experience. It must seize that opportunity not merely to celebrate an improved record, but to build a railway in which safeguards are used, warnings heard and lessons acted upon.

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Do read my previous blog too:

https://anindecisiveindian.blogspot.com/2024/09/rerouting-safety-on-indian-railways.html