Getting rail safety back on track

Train travel has now become a hazardous exercise for the ordinary Indian. What has gone wrong?

On Thursday, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will lay the foundation for India’s first bullet train, a Rs 1.10-lakh crore plan with a deadline of 2022 for the first service between Ahmedabad and Mumbai. The inauguration of this signature project comes just weeks after a major accident of the Utkal Express at Khatauli, Uttar Pradesh, with 23 fatalities. The derailment of the Utkal Express, an entirely avoidable tragedy, followed a series of accidents, big and small, this year and finally resulted in Suresh Prabhu being moved out of the railway ministry and the resignation of the Railway Board chairman, A