A goods train collided with the Sealdah-bound Kanchanjunga Express from behind near New Jalpaiguri in north Bengal, injuring several passengers. Videos showed one wagon suspended in the air after the pile-up. In this exclusive chat with former GM of Indian Railways Mr. Sudhanshu Mani, we understand the role of Kavach system and hotwo
w it could have saved lives here.
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w it could have saved lives here.
#TrainAccident #NorthBengal #KanchanjungaExpress #NewJalpaiguri #Darjeelingnews #AshwiniVaishnaw #TrainAccidentinIndia #Indianews #Worldnews #Oneindia #Oneindianews
~PR.282~PR.100~PR.320~
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hello and welcome. You're watching One India and this unfortunate train accident in West
00:04Bengal is something that has once again raised the concerns and questions over the safety
00:09of rail travel in India. Sudhanshu Mani, former General Manager, Indian Railways, joins us
00:16on the broadcast. Sudhanshu Maniji is the creator of India's first semi-high speed
00:21train set, train 18, Vande Bharat Express, and retired General Manager of the Indian
00:27Railways' biggest coach factory, Integral Coach Factory, also known as ICF. Mr. Mani,
00:33thank you so much for speaking to One India. First things first, in your understanding,
00:38what went wrong in this unfortunate accident that happened this morning?
00:46See there, I will begin with a caveat. Whatever information I have is only from the TV and
00:54I am just trying to understand as to what happened. So, the information is incomplete,
00:58but based on what I have come to know, I will tell you. What has happened is,
01:03this section is an automatic signalling directory, which has been commissioned perhaps
01:09recently. Automatic signalling is commissioned to increase the train capacity of any section
01:16because in this section, there is a signal every kilometre and even in occupied line,
01:24when your signal is not green, it is not taken off, you can wait there for one or two minutes,
01:30two minutes at night, one minute in day and proceed at a restricted speed.
01:36It permits you to enter an occupied section. Now, in this case, Kanchenjunga Express seems to have
01:45stopped at a signal which was defective. It had perhaps started moving slowly. It s not very
01:53clear, either it was moving slowly or it had stopped and the train behind it, the freight train,
02:01from the way the accident has happened, it looks like it disregarded that one signal and
02:09and continued at a relatively higher speed, maybe 40-50 kilometres per hour,
02:19which the driver should not have done. Had he stopped at the signal which was
02:25defective or red and then started again, he would not have picked up this much speed to my mind and
02:31the collision would have been much, impact would have been much smaller. So, it primarily looks
02:38like a mistake by the driver of the freight train. If there are other aspects, they would
02:45come to light about signalling and other things that we do not know yet. So, basically a case of
02:53disregard of a signal aspect by the driver of the freight train.
02:59Fortunate part, you see, we are fortunate in a way, one should not say,
03:04the rear coaches of Kanchenjunga were all parcel coaches, two of them, SLR and parcel coach,
03:10which means there were hardly, maybe the guard and nobody else. Otherwise, the casualties would
03:16have been much higher. It would have been a horrific accident. So, it has been, yes,
03:24you would have seen one rear coach which has climbed over the locomotive. You can imagine
03:30if it was with people. You can imagine if it was with passengers, the havoc would have taken place.
03:37Absolutely. Mr. Mani, time and again, these unfortunate accidents somehow in a country as
03:44big as India and the rail network also as widespread as India, I do not think any other
03:50country could boast of the same thing. Several mechanisms have been put in place. One among them
03:57is the Kavach aspect, which again comes into the question mark. How efficient do you see it? What
04:04are the bottlenecks if they are not implemented in totality? Or is it something else that is needed
04:09to be done? Good question. So, first let me tell you that whenever such an accident takes place,
04:16we talk of consciousness of staff, sensitizing staff, training, and these things are, of course,
04:23they are necessary. But we always talk of them every time there is an accident.
04:28It should be followed more in spirit and not like a lip service. That s obvious.
04:34Now coming to Kavach. So, Kavach is a powerful tool of signaling which Indian engineers have
04:42developed. And in the present case, if this section had Kavach and if the airplane had,
04:51because Kavach has ground installation as well as the trains and locomotives. Suppose this section
04:59was covered by Kavach and the rear train had the Kavach instrument on the locomotive,
05:05this accident would not have taken place. Two things, it would have, the moment it saw
05:12a red signal, it would not allow the driver to pass that signal at high speed. It will first
05:19let it stop there for one or two minutes, whichever is stipulated, and then not permit
05:25it to take speed beyond a certain limit, which could be 15 kilometers or so. So,
05:31Kavach would have prevented this. In case the front train also had Kavach,
05:38then Kavach would have ensured that this train stopped 100 meters short of that.
05:43So, this is a good example where Kavach would have totally prevented this accident.
05:47And that's why Kavach is very important, fast rollout of Kavach. Money nowadays is not a
05:52problem. Centre is giving all the funds to railways. The problem is very slow execution
05:59of the project. A successful project, it is still based only in South Central Railway and
06:05proliferation has not taken place. It is time that the complete focus of railways is diverted
06:13towards installation of Kavach as fast as possible all over the major trunk route of
06:19Indian railways. Right. One final question, Narmani Sahib.
06:24You have been part of the train 18 Bandi Bharat Express and also you have worked with the biggest
06:32coach factory, Integral Coach Factory also. So, you have seen things happening from both the
06:37aspects, from the manufacturing of the trains, the hardware also, and also in the overall
06:47mechanism and functioning of the railways on a particular route or line or in the direction that
06:52you maintain. More often than not, Mr. Mani, what happens is when an accident happens,
06:58an unfortunate accident like this happens, then only these things come up that
07:07is there any possibility or has India or Indian railways reached that point as of now that we can
07:13prevent and say for certainty at least 99 percent that now the routes are error-free
07:19and this won't happen? So, I'll not be able to assign a percentage,
07:27but let's say Balasore happened in June last year. One year has passed. Right from that time,
07:33not me, everyone has been saying that this is time that Kavach should be rolled out on a much
07:38faster basis. Okay. So, it will take time. It will not happen overnight, but the speed is slow.
07:46Once we have Kavach installed all over our major trunk routes, 90 percent of such accidents would
07:53be avoided. 10 percent may still happen. For example, Balasore would have happened with
07:57reduced impact. That's one. Another important thing, you see, safety consciousness is fine,
08:03but another very important tool which has become available is artificial intelligence
08:09and I've been saying it, others have also been saying it. Huge data is available with railways,
08:15station data, train data. They are in cocooned. They are not collated. They should be collated
08:22and artificial intelligence applied to generate very, very serious alerts on day-to-day basis,
08:29not a plethora of alerts, just very serious 10 alerts and that would drive a change in culture,
08:36safety culture of the railways and would have very far-reaching dividends.
08:41So, instead of talking too many things, I would only talk of two things, Kavach and use of
08:46artificial intelligence to collate and then examine this data to generate. Post-mortem is fine. I'm
08:54talking of genuine alerts because such situations keep happening every day and they are pushed under
09:00the carpet. With AI employed and generation of alerts, it would not happen. So, that would go a
09:05long way towards making Indian railways much safer than it is today. Okay. So, the use of AI,
09:11which India is also promoting a lot and obviously Kavach, some integrated systems.
09:18One final question, sir. You know, this is a time of distress. Many families would be worried,
09:23emergency contact numbers have been sent out. You have been part of the railways for the better
09:27part of your career. Also, add to the higher echelons of Indian railways. What message would
09:34you like to give to the family members, those who might be in a panic mode as of now and assure them
09:41from the railway side that yes, help is on its way? See, the people who have lost some near or
09:50dear one, any message from my side would be infructuous because nothing can really make up
09:56for the loss they've had. Those who are injured, the way the reports are coming, state government
10:02is active, railways are active. I would only say that things are better than earlier and you would
10:07be well taken care of. This is all I can say. And I would like to assure, yes, that tools are
10:15available. If railways show a little bit more focus, we can march towards making our railways
10:23much, much safer than it is. That's what I would like to say at this point. Mr. Mani, thank you so
10:30much for speaking to One India and One India family. Thanks to you for taking time out in
10:34such time of distress and such short notice also. We really appreciate your inputs and your time.
10:40Thank you. Thanks for calling me. Thank you.