India, money for show horses: Government once again puts high-profile projects ahead of rail safety improvements

ROME – Money, lots of money, for show horses. A little less, a lot less, for safety along the Indian railways. After the bloody and disastrous train accident of 2 June in the state of Odisha, where a passenger train derailed and hit two other trains, another with many people on board and a freight train, killing 288 people and injuring one thousand passengers, the New Delhi government has decided to invest resources in high-profile projects. The balance of the disaster is very heavy, even for a country accustomed to railway accidents and where the safety problems of a system that transports 8 billion people a year – more or less the equivalent of the world population – shows all its limits.

Series A and Series B passengers. Compared to the past, it must be said, train travel in the immense Asian country has become much safer, despite last Friday’s disaster, but the government – according to the judgment of the opposition parties and various NGOs that deal with rights human and civil – once again he puts projects destined for the upper reaches of India’s rigid social ladder before basic improvements in safety, moreover in a country where big industry and political fortunes are often linked to the vast intertwined railway system. In recent years, India has lavished public resources on new trains, but its purse strings have been much tighter when it comes to ensuring the safety of those already traveling along its tracks.

Indian resources on high speed only: does it remind us of anything? The government spent nearly $30 billion on the rail system last fiscal year, a 15 percent increase over the previous year. With more than 20 million passengers traveling on India’s rails every day, many of them migrant workers, a politician can’t go wrong with pouring money into the system, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done just that, to no small fanfare. But most of the premier’s initiatives – it seems – weren’t aimed at the fundamental steps needed to get trains from point A to point B without incident, but at improving speed and comfort. He regularly touts new, higher-fare trains connecting major cities and has made a Japanese-style bullet train a top priority, though he can do nothing to improve the lives of the country’s ordinary passengers. In short, government choices that we Italians know well.