 Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. Today, on Global Connections, we're going to take a look at the train disaster in India. And we're going to talk to Rupmati Khandikar, who has been following it, and she can tell us the latest. Rupmati, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on to discuss this very tragic accident in eastern India. It probably has disturbed and disrupted the whole country. Am I right? Aloha, Jay. And it's always been lovely to be with you. And today, we're discussing one of the worst railway disasters in India. So this happened a couple of days back and it shook the entire country as it should. And it was a gruesome accident as we see it. And we'll just preview what we can talk about the entire system and how it's one of the biggest, biggest railway disasters because of the passengers involved, because of the death toll involved. It's around 238 officials and 900 injured. So we go to discuss one of the biggest railway disasters of the century. Yeah. Well, tell us what happened. You've taken a look at it. And so you know, the way these three trains came together at high speed. How did that happen? So now we see in this that the Haura Express was there were two trains which were interlocking and coming close to each other. And the Balasore Express got a signal. They got a signal to go the interlocking system that there is. They got a system to divert. And when they diverted, Jay, we can see in the clip that it went to the iron ore train, the iron ore train which was standing still stationary train, but iron ore train. So the center of gravity, the stability that this train has is enormous change. So when a passenger train at full speed, when it collided with the iron ore train, the engine climbed up and the three passenger boogies behind it started disrupted. And the other train which was passing by the Haura Express, the tail end of that collided with this disaster. And then there was a collision. Otherwise, that train was passing. Now this interlocking signal that the train was given to divert. Who gave this? Why it was given? It was a human error and it was identified to be a person who did it. And now a central bureau of investigations CBI in India has ordered a probe into this. So it's pretty serious business, Jay. It was not an accident. It was a disaster linked to human error, intentional or not, that is going to be investigated. Oh boy. Yeah, I saw photographs of the passenger trains and they folded up like an accordion. I mean, it was one car squashed against the other car in a crush of metal. And people who were caught in those cars had no way to get out. Yeah. If we see the clip and we now understand that how the trains came, Jay, let's have a look at that. Yeah, let's see the clips now. What is this, Rumani? Jay, the Haura Express was traveling towards one direction and the Abalasur Express was traveling to another direction and see the interlocking error that it gets. It gets a chance to divert where the iron or train is standing stagnant in another place. And that's when it just climbs onto it. And now there is a total disaster because the tail end of the Haura Express, which is passing by, collides into this accident prone site. So we have passenger boogies which have collided with each other. So one train out of these three was stationary. But the train unfortunately was of iron or if it had moved or it had taken cushion the impact, the impact would have been a little less as compared to just standing like a dead wall and this train banging onto it. So that was what caused the impact. And the impact of this train collision was such that you couldn't avoid it. Two trains at high speed. Now Jay, there is an automatic train protection ATP that is being developed in India, indigenously. And it is by the research standards organization, RFDSO in India and the trials are being held in South India. This is not this accident happened in West India, West Bengal Plains. And the trials that are happening for the Kovach system. Now this is an indigenously developed system and it's a train breaking system, anti-collision system, Kovach. But it's come a little bit too late, isn't it? It is developed one fourth the cost that it's in the worldwide market, one fourth the cost. But the government says that anyway, this Kovach system would have not come on to this route because it's not a high traffic route. So it would have been the fourth tier implementation of that system into this route. So this was a disaster impending to happen. Well, I saw that the trains, the two passenger trains were traveling at 80 miles an hour. That's very fast. Very fast. It's not the, you know, the French TGV, the French TGV. The train to Grand Vitesse in France or the bullet train in Japan. And I think the Chinese have a very fast train also. But it's still at 80 miles an hour. That's pretty, that's pretty fast. We do have one route coming up in Andhra. You've seen the trains in the colonial countries which used to have those metal bars and everything. We were running on that. There was no new track added. There were no routes added. He is trying to overhaul the entire system with the train system dependent on green energy. Like we saw in the COP26 that he was the only one who promised that by 2017 we will go all green. And as coal is used by railways, railways is one of the biggest corporation of India. And it uses around 40% of thermal energy. So reforming the railways was a good route to go with the green way. And getting new trains known as Vande Bharat, they are the fast trains. And fortunately, unfortunately, none of those trains were involved in these. These were the old ones which were running. So these are not the high tech or high speed ones which have come in. Still, they were at a good pace, but none of the new trains that were coming. Now, I read that Modi has spent $30 billion in the past year to upgrade the rail infrastructure. What's the background of that? I mean, I'm taking a guess here, but just my observation is that trains are very important as a method of transportation in India. People don't necessarily have cars. They take trains. They've taken trains since the early days of the British Empire. And they still do take trains. And what happened here is it has to have a huge effect on the whole system. $30 billion. That's a lot to spend in one fiscal year. Yes. India is huge and so is the train system because it links almost every village, almost every route in India to each other. And this system upgradation that he did, around $30 billion. Why the amount? Because this amount was never spent on railways like this one upgradation like that. The trains which were already there, they were either repaired just a little bit of renovation, but nothing like this. This is pure upgradation where you have new trains being added, new routes being added. And in India, airfare and railway travel, they're approximately the same cost. But people still prefer railway because it takes them right to their doorstep. We don't have airports in every village, but we do have railway stations in every village. So that's why the railway system has got a higher linking road than flights. So that's the main reason why he's upgraded this railway system. Well, it sounds like one of his big priorities is infrastructure. If you want to bring India into the top tier of economic powers in the world, you've got to do that. And I recall, I think we talked about a bridge, a remarkable bridge that he built. I guess that was also in Punjab that cost a lot of money, but it covered a river way down below, and it was very expensive, very high-tech bridge. So it sounds to me like he's doing this for all modes of transportation because he realizes that you have a better economy and more government control if you can improve the transportation system in general. And rail is a very important part of that for India and for him. And so this has got to be important for his political image, isn't it? I mean, since the government owns the railways, then the first inclination is to blame the government for something. How has that worked out? What's the political pushback on this? Jay, like we see after the World War, infrastructure will develop to give employment to people. So infrastructure for countries is always the best avenue to provide employment, create demand, put money in the hands of the people and then demand supply that cycle goes on. So Modi, by doing the infrastructure bit is doing the right thing. And these bridges that connected remote areas of India to us and supplies towards those places also was important of logistics, of military, of guarding the security borders of everything. So Jay, this backlash for this accident did not reach Modi in such a way that nobody has blamed Mr. Modi. After this accident, Jay, if it was in the previous tenure of the Congress, the minister, the railway minister would resign. It's my responsibility and I resign. If you have access to this, I will show it to you. There's Ashwin Vaishnav, who's the railway minister of Mr. Modi. Jay, he has been on a track for four days straight waiting for the trains to run back on track. He has just concentrated wholeheartedly and to get the tracks running back because you see how many coaches had collided with each other. Around seven coaches had collided with each other and there were dead bodies and the electrical lines had got cut. So it would have taken another government weeks to get back to the track. But this Ashwin Vaishnav, he sat on the spot. He's not left it. And within two days, Jay, he has got the track running back on. He's not disrupted anything else. So taking responsibility is just not by resigning. Taking responsibility is getting things back into action, getting the route back. So people are not blind. People have access to social media. People have access to every bit of news. And when they saw this kind of responsibility undertaking and restoration of normality and the prime minister was the first one to reach the site. You have to give them credit for that because this was in a, what, a rural area, the name of the town, what, Odisha? Odisha. Yes, Odisha is a state and Balashtur is the place where it happened. Yeah. So that means that the people who were necessarily not necessarily on the train were not necessarily from that area. They may have just been passing through. And so people had to come from distant places to identify the dead and the government people who came to put the trains, fix the track and all that. They had to come from distant places too. So this has been an upheaval. And I imagine the Indian press has covered, the press around the world has covered this accident, this casualty. And it has been everywhere in every media for the past few days. It is a world reaction. How is the reaction in the media in India? I would imagine that it's even more so in India. Yes. This disaster was in the news headlines on every bit of news channel or resource, a source that we can find. But nobody has reported a negative thing or, you know, you couldn't point fingers and say that your railway upgradation was wrong. Because firstly, the route is not high priority. Secondly, it was a human error which caused the interlocking system signal. This signal was given and then withdrawn. So Jay, something is fishy over there. And thirdly, the people responsible at the top took responsibility in such a way that they were on the ground. So people have appreciated that and people have seen that they did not just let go and leave it to the lower ranks to take care of business. The highest, the top priority, everybody has come in and they have hence on been able to get the track running. Because see, if you suspend one track, there are different trains, different routes. Two days of holding back of this would disconnect two states. So somebody coming up with this and Jay, if you see, they have to do a lot of things because the tracks which are there, they are not, they cannot just be restored. They need a lot of interlinking. What is that? Efforts. You have to have the department of trains which everything has to come together. And that was done at the highest level and the Prime Minister himself came on to the site. That was a site to see because you never seen a Prime Minister just taking the entire blueprint of the place telling what has to be done, instructions passed, going and meeting them in the hospital. These were not just photo opportunities because even if there was no photograph involved, he would have done it. He is that kind of a person, even as a Minister. He's done the right thing politically then. This is going to make him even more popular. Yes. No, it won't dent his image, popular or it won't increase his popularity, but this never dented his image. He made sure that he did the right, that was at the right time. Jay, if he had a Railway Minister who would have just deserted the scene, we would have had a very wrong impression because in the past, if you pick up and you see, we have had a lot of disasters in India and we have had Railway Ministers just confining their responsibility to their resignation. Just that. Nobody has made sure that it's back to nomads. Yeah, well, I mean, 200, 300 people died and their families must be coming from all over India to deal with all the arrangements that have to be made, including, as you mentioned, the hospital. If there are 900 or more people who are injured, a lot of them are going to be in the hospital. I imagine that those hospitals would be in Odisha also, so people have got to be coming from far and wide to take care of their relatives. Community came in again this time, Jay, like we discussed in the COVID time. There were many organizations, especially the RSS, Sivasan and many organizations who came on site and there were donations of blood within 12 hours of the system, so much that the blood bank had to turn back people saying that we have had enough. There were so many people, so community in spite and over above the government also came in and helped all these people immediately. And Jay, in these trains, we know the people who buy the tickets. We identified those, but those people who are just traveling without a ticket or just traveling to the route, they are also involved. So compensations were announced for the people dead, the people injured and the people differentiation between gravely injured and just injured, and they were given promptly. So, there's a lot of players involved, as you mentioned, there's the government, various departments in the government. There's the people and their families, people who died and were injured. There's the healthcare system in that area to take care of them. And of course, there's everybody in India is aware of this and there's the media, you know, and so everybody is aware. And my question to you is, what has India learned? What have the people learned, the train system learned? What has the government learned, if anything? What have the family, what is the man on the street or the woman on the street learned? And I guess I want to ask you also about the reaction from outside of India, because this was, you know, this was a matter of news all over the world. And I imagine just as there was an outpouring of support in India from Indian L.M.O.s and every organizations, there was probably an outpouring of support from India's neighbors and friends and other countries. So, what has that been like and what have, if you can say, what have these various, you know, elements of the catastrophe, what have they learned or what do you think they should have learned? Jay, the railway upgradation system, the covered system, because this was a low priority route, they would have to get into faster upgradation of this covered system, which is an anti-collision device that is being developed by India. That should have been, now, there'll be a fast track to that, isn't it? Plus, like Jay, the routes on Indian tracks, you cannot monitor, you cannot have security for them. There's a clip going viral of a small child placing rocks on the track, which is very dangerous, is placing big rocks. So, how do you prevent such disasters? There has to be a self-responsibility model responsibility. And Jay, if we see this about Mr. Modi being criticised outside of the country, there are some things which are above, way above your personal interest and that is nationalist interest, your collective responsibility towards your nation. When a nation is in a disaster, if they don't identify themselves as Indians and they get down to criticising just for political means, there's something drastically wrong with them. There's a collective responsibility for a collective action that has to be taken and that is each politician's responsibility because when they go outside of the country, they are representing India and poking on a disaster or poking on a thing which has to malign somebody's image for your own personal reasons, is never right. In times of disaster, in times of calamity, everybody has to come together and rise above their political intentions. There has always been the norm, the responsibility, political responsibility that each person has and if they get down to be little more belittling BJP for this, that is their personal vested interest that they want to come to power the next time. But nobody is blind, everybody sees it, that they are showing that they are petty in their mindset and upgradation of railways will never stop. India is going towards, this upgradation was long needed, seven decades and nothing has been done for upgrading the passenger system. It's one of the largest networks under one manager, so when the government manages it, upgradation will never stop. They will point fingers, they will try to hurt, but their collective responsibility, their moral responsibility is towards national interests, any politician. No, there was one suggestion I noticed there where they were talking about priorities that the, I'm only assuming here that the $30 billion went for new rail equipment. This equipment involved in this catastrophe was old rail equipment, or not new anyway. And so the point was that perhaps the priority was on new rather than old, and old is more dangerous than new. And I don't know, I don't have that interplay with the software and the anti-collision system you mentioned. But one thing seems to me is that going forward, the government can and probably will spend more than $30 billion going forward. That it will take more money, it will allocate more money to rebuild the older infrastructure, not only the trains and the rail and the security, as you said, where the child puts a rock on the track, that is really dangerous. But to make sure there's a fence around the rail so that that can happen. So I think what's going to happen, what should happen anyway, is you have to put the priority on all elements of the system, the new ones and the not so new ones, and put the safety technology, the safety devices on both the new ones and the old ones. I think there'll probably be a public call for that. And I think it's obvious that that should happen. And from this discussion, it seems to me that rail is part of India's DNA. We really can't afford to lose people on trains because that's the way they get around. That's what binds India together. That's why this is such a catastrophe because it's at the heart. It's at the heart of India and its economy and its social connection. So I imagine we're not going to hear the end of the story for a while. That there will be a lot of discussion about what needs to be done in terms of the money and the priorities going forward. Do you agree? Of course, of course, Jay, point on railways at the heart of Indian economy and Indian lifestyle. And Jay, you remember during the COVID, we had created green channels which was transporting oxygen. So it's a lifeline, an unpublished, you know, you can't really compare the goods transportation, the people transportation, the role that Indian railways plays in creating jobs. That is also a big thing. The employment portion of Indian railways is unparalleled. So we have something which we'll keep on progressing. And this is one I hope of never disasters. Well, I think if we look again in five years or 10, we will see high speed trains, better rail systems, better control systems, and actually comfort just like in Teche Bay in France and the high speed rail in Japan, and for that matter, China. And so, you know, one myth I wanted to spell before we conclude our discussion is that, you know, people have seen photographs of the popular culture around trains in India where there's a million people hanging off the train. You know, they're stuffed in the cars, they're hanging, they're holding on to the train as it goes forward. And I don't think it's like that at all. I think that India has given that up a long time ago and that in either the new ones or the old ones, if you take a train ride in India, it's comfortable, it's spacious, and it's organized. Am I right about that? A bit on that. Because there are different classes of Indian railways. You do have the seated where you have your booking done, your seat done, and you will claim your seat. But there are still many locals which are intercity travelers and which somewhere just people climb onto it and they'll say, we'll get down at the next stop. So a lot of, what do you call them, hordes? Hordes are still on and the country still functions on those people hanging out and falling out. So that continues. That doesn't stop. Well, you think it might change. I mean, going forward, I think people may insist on changing. In fact, are there people in India, people that you know who are saying, hey, this is dangerous business. I don't want to take that risk anymore. I want to have these trains really comfortable and especially safe. Are people saying that? People use that. I mean, normalizing a crowd in India is very easy, Jay. Two days into India, you will feel it's normal to push into a crowd to get into a crowd. In Japan, you remember they have those people who have professional pushers who push you into the train. In India, the crowd itself acts as the pusher. So you have a crowd behind which is the pusher of the crowd behind. So the crowd actually, if you just stand, they will take you in the train. So we don't have professional crowd pushers, but the crowd itself gives you momentum. And you can't escape a crowd in India. Even if you get down the train, you will be in the same crowd. So that's it. Well, 1.4 billion people. That's quite a crowd. But one thing that strikes me, and this is my own experience, and my own experience with you talking with you is that I think people now, 2023, are more conscious about India than they have been. About India's economy, its success in technology and telecommunications, the success of Indians who come to other countries like the United States and how successful they are in so many ways in business. And India is like a very important player that we have to pay attention to. We have to relate to. We have to have our global relations with them. And although this is a terrible, tragic accident, it does make people more aware of what India is and what it's like and what its challenges and its politics are. And although I hate to see people killed and hurt, the fact is this is going to be one of those events that make people around the world think more of India. Do you agree? Yes. It's a learning point. It's a point where we've got communities together, but people together got national interest together and global attention to this event. But we see that India has to get this back on track because nothing can afford to stop the line of progress that they're making. This has to be a part and parcel of the route that India is taking. And Jay, the disaster because it was like I repeat, because it was human error, we could not blame the system. And the aftermath of the restoration was such that you could not blame the administration and the community feeling that people came together to help that showed that India has a resilient spirit. So when Turkey had an earthquake, India was the first to help. So when a country which is trying to, it's an indigenous effort is very important, Jay, because it's a colonized country. We have to not forget that. It's not been at this level from the beginning. It has reached this level through hard work. So irrespective of who's at the top, this country has come from a colonized nation to being one of a developing nation towards a developed nation at 2070 it wants to be. So and still going with consideration and consolidation of efforts towards the efforts are not harmful to others. It is within. It's the Hindu way of life that you have to look towards yourself in a cell and progress within yourself. So that kind of philosophy is practiced on this national scale. So that it deserves a bit of respect. Well, there is a statement that people do come together and that they are gathering together about this. They are expressing, you know, community, national community about this. And that's pretty obvious in the world. So it's a positive side of this whole story. Well, thank you, Rupati. Thank you for helping us understand what happened and what the implications are. And I'm and I'm so sorry for, you know, the people who who were killed and injured. But I think the world needs to understand what happened and what it means for India. Thank you, Rupati. Most welcome, Jay. It was always my pleasure.