India took a giant step towards realizing the dream of starting bullet train service in the country. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe today jointly performed the ground breaking ceremony of India’s first-ever bullet train project at Sabarmati Station ground. Both the leaders termed the day as historic. The launching of bullet train project will definitely improve the high speed train service in the country. But before that government should work out a mechanism to improve the existing rail service. Series of train accidents in the last two year have severely dented the reputation of Indian railways. Suresh Prabhu who was handpicked by PM Narendra Modi to bring in reform in the railways was recently shunted out of the rail ministry.
There was mounting criticism against him following number of train accidents in recent months. The railways have miserably failed to check the rising train accident. By far, the highest number of accidents is because of derailments & accidents at level crossings. Nine (9) out of Ten (10) railway accidents during 2009-10 and 2014-15 have been due to derailments and accidents at level crossings. The other type of accidents includes collisions, etc. But their number is relatively much lower. There have been various causes for train accidents ranging from Human Failure to Equipment Failure to Sabotage etc. The government of India should first find out a long term solution to deal with the accident cases. There is an urgent need to take help from countries like China, Japan, US, etc to improve the safety standard of Indian railways. Vast majority of Indians depend on railways for the transportation. It is the duty of government to make sure that train journey is safe and secure.