With the Modi government actively engaging in the restructuring of the Indian Railways, the Indian Railways has now declared fiscal 2019-20 to be its safest year in the past 166 years as it recorded zero passengers death this year.
Marking it to be one of the greatest achievements of the Indian Railways, the data revealed that the total numbers of consequential accidents – collisions, fire in trains, level crossing accidents and derailment – have decreased by nearly 95 per cent over the last 38 years.
According to a Business Today report, in the financial year 2017-18, Indian Railways had reported 73 accidents across the railway network which reduced to 59 accidents during the financial year 2019 to due to the implementation of continuous safety measures.
Additionally, the total number of train accidents per million kilometres reduced to an all-time low of 0.06 in 2018-19.
According to reports, the number of accidents in 1960-61 was 2,131, which dipped to 840 in 1970-71. The total number of accidents in 1980-81 was recorded at 1,013, in 1990-91 it stood at 532 accidents, and in 2010-11 there were 141 such cases.
Read: Indian Railway sets one of its best safety records ever during the 2017-18 Financial Year
An average of over 500 accidents took place annually between 1990-1995, with around 2,400 deaths and 4,300 injured. However, these numbers dipped significantly to an average of 110 accidents every year between 2013-2018, in which around 990 people were killed and 1,500 injured.
The year 2014 marked by the succession of the NDA government over the UPA regime started a new chapter in the development of railways, with the government actively engaging in improving the railways system by implementing state of art practices on a war-footing basis.
Yesterday, in its continued effort, to restructure the Indian Railways, the Modi government announced some bold reforms that would break the 150-year-old legacy.
The Railway Board will be reorganised into a leaner structure on functional lines headed by CRB with four members of Infrastructure, Operations and Business Development, Rolling Stock and Finance along with Independent Members. The eight Group A services will now be unified into a central service called Indian Railway Management Services (IRMS).
Putting an end to the “Departmentalism” of the Indian Railway that has long hobbled its progress, the move to amalgamate the disparate services by the Modi government is aimed to put an end to the age-old culture of working in ‘silos’ and expedite decision making and enabling coherent vision for the organisation.
