Indian crash followed investment surge
India has poured money into improving its railway system.The government has been investing record amounts for years – it’s budgeted almost $30 billion for railway capital investment in the current financial year, 50 per cent more than last year. And yet the country is reeling after a devastating three-train crash on Friday killed at least 275 people and injured more than 1,000 in the eastern state of Odisha. The government said signal failure might have caused the crash, India’s worst train disaster since 1999. Why did this happen? Part of the problem could be a gap between what India is spending on new trains and what it spends on maintaining those already running. A report last year from an independent auditor found less money had been set aside for track renewal and officials hadn’t spent all of the allocated funds. A new safety system to prevent collisions hadn’t been installed in the area of last week’s crash. Swapnil Garg, a former railway official, told the FT that the crash also highlighted another area of underinvestment: personnel. “As fast as we’re moving on the technical side,” he said, “the human resource side is where we’re lacking.”
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