India: Top Detective Agency to Investigate Catastrophic Train Wreck
The Facts
On Monday, India's railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw recommended that the Central Bureau of Investigation, the country's top detective agency, investigate the three-train collision in the eastern Indian state of Odisha on Friday.
Previously, Vaishnaw had suggested a signal fault — with a "change in electronic interlocking" as the likely cause — led to the deadly crash that killed at least 288 travelers and left over 1K injured in Odisha's Balasore district.
The Spin
Narrative A
Friday's accident, unfortunately, highlights India's worrying railway safety record. In 2021, more than 16K people were killed in nearly 18K railway accidents across the country, mainly from collisions between trains. Countless lives will be lost if PM Narendra Modi's administration continues to launch high-speed trains instead of addressing the issues of aging infrastructure, poor traffic management systems, and overworked loco pilots.
Narrative B
Despite facing a plethora of problems, India's railway network is moving towards modernization, including the face-lifting of over 200 railway stations and the construction of 100K km of new railway tracks over the next 20 years. While the cause of Friday's crash hasn't been ascertained yet, Indian authorities are moving quickly in their investigation and search and rescue, which, for now, is rightly prioritizing victims and their families.