Needed: A war on accidents after crash, stampedes, and derailments

An air crash in Ahmedabad. A suburban rail disaster in Greater Mumbai. A stampede in Bengaluru. Three tragic events in a few days. And before that, a stampede at the Kumbh. It’s too early to say why the Dreamliner crashed. The stampedes at the Kumbh and the stadium exemplify the madness of crowds and are new chapters in an age-old narrative of stampedes. 

The tragic accident between Mumbra and Diwa stations led to the least loss. “Only” four commuters died, and nine were injured whereas the counts in the other incidents were much more. However, the suburban incident is the tip of a very large iceberg and despite being the least in terms of apparent body count, it is the most noteworthy. 

There are between 2,500 and 3,000 accidental deaths every year on the Mumbai suburban system. That works out to seven a day, mostly from falling off trains or from being hit while crossing tracks.  Some of these may be misclassified suicides — 76 suicides were officially recorded on Mumbai’s suburban system in 2022. For context, three people die every year from accidents on London’s rail system, and another 40 commit suicide. Paris each year has around 60 deaths, including suicides.

The Mumbra-Diwa incident occurred because commuters leaning out of the doors of a train collided with commuters leaning out of another train as the two crossed on adjacent tracks. In 2022, the last year for which the National Crime Records Bureau data is easily available, over 21,000 deaths from all train accidents were registered, and 73 per cent of these occurred because people fell off trains, or were hit by trains. 

Over 10 per cent of those deaths occurred in Mumbai alone. The latest tragedy has led to assurances that automatically closing doors will be introduced on suburban coaches. That could cut the toll to some degree. But it will also lead to resentment — commuters hang out of coaches because they are desperate to get to work in time. Auto-doors will delay many journeys. 

Running more trains during peak hours on a system already running at over-capacity is difficult. But Mumbai has to find ways to increase transit capacity, whe­t­h­­er it’s via metro, or buses, or through creating additional rail capacity, if it wishes to reduce the desperation that leads to risk-taking. 

In addition to increasing capacity and introducing auto-doors, other safety measures must include the smart redesign of rail infrastructure (like more footbridges) and education to persuade commuters not to risk crossing tracks and jumping on or off moving trains. 

So, it’s a tough ask. But it has to be done. This is a problem faced by every megapolis and other cities handle it much better. Delhi also has substantial deaths on public transit systems but it’s come down since Delhi Metro started operating, and governors were introduced on DTC buses to reduce speeds. Kolkata has far fewer such deaths than Mumbai or Delhi, probably because the Kolkata commuter cares less about punctuality. 

While this bleeding continues year after year, it casts a pall of shame on the authorities running India’s financial capital.  Mumbai, with its suburban spread, cannot function without an efficient public transit system, and a system that kills seven people a day cannot be classified as “efficient”. 

One of the behavioural issues is that these deaths occur in drip-drip fashion and no single incident causes much outrage.  The Indian Railways is not held to account politically; nor are municipal authorities, which should coordinate with the Railways to redesign transit infrastructure and increase capacity for greater safety. 

The stampedes, on the other hand, hark back to tradition. India has a tradition of stampedes triggered by religious fervour.  The British remarked on the large number of fatalities that occurred at the Puri Rathyatra in the 1800s. Cricket is the most fervently practised religion in the subcontinent so it fits well with the tradition. 

Large crowds can stampede and effective crowd management is required to prevent this. Crowd management should surely be part of the skillset of any administration. It isn’t hard to predict where a crowd will gather during a festival or a protest for that matter. Governments use many methods to reduce the scale of protests, rerouting buses, shutting down stations, deploying large police contingents with drones, and cordoning off spaces to break up protesters. Similar means could, and should, be used to control happy crowds.