Isro to help improve railway safety

I have asked railtel to look at a programme to connect thousands of railway stations with wi-fi, Piyush Goyal said

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Indian Railways is working with the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) to devise safety mechanisms to make travel by trains more safer, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said on Thursday.

The minister said he met Isro Chairman A S Kiran Kumar a few days ago. Railways and RailTel are working together to explore use of space technology for safety, he added.

"Safety is a very pressing and urgent need. The discussion which we had was very eye-opening in some sense for me, but also very exciting in terms of possibilities that open for engaging with space technologies that Isro has developed, helping in bringing safer travel to Indian Railways," Goyal said at the India Mobile Congress.

Talking about technology, Goyal said the railways has been an early adopter of computers which could have been also expanded for various operational processes like safety.

He said modern technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning are going to change the world and India has an opportunity to look at what is the latest across the world and bring it to the country.

"I have asked railtel to look at a programme to connect thousands of railway stations with wi-fi... we can actually provide also the villages around railway stations with wi-fi connectivity and get rural India also connected with new age technology. Let's give them same kind of opportunity that our children in cities are enjoying," Goyal said.

The minister said that round the clock access of connectivity and electricity is dream of billions of Indians and the government is making efforts to achieve it.