Is Indian Railways on Track to Fix Bridges Requiring Attention?

The Indian Railways has one of the largest networks in the world, but its infrastructure is crumbling.

Indian Railways has a number of distressed bridges requiring urgent attention, but is the government paying attention? (Photo: iStockphoto)

Indian Railways moves the entire population of Australia every day, statistically speaking. Yes, via 12,000 trains nearly 23 millions passengers travel every day. Now you know why you don’t get tickets easily.

Beyond the unavailability of tickets, there are more problems plaguing the archaic railway system. India, with its rail network of 65,000 kms is the fourth largest in the world. China, with its 1,12,000 kms is the second largest. In retrospect, India had 55,000 kms of rail network in 1947, and in 1949 China had 21,000 kms. That means, in nearly similar time window, India added 10,000 kms but China added a mammoth 91,000 kms – figuratively adding one and a half times of India’s entire network.

With the sluggish expansion, India has also fallen short on maintaining what it inherited from the British Raj. Indian Railway’s network has 1,38,912 bridges. Of these, 35,437 were built more than 100 years ago.

The maintenance of these bridges have been a cause of huge concern, due to their age and topographical factors. For example, the Pamban bridge which connects Rameswaram to mainland India is situated in a ‘highly corrosive environment’. The recent twin train accidents in Madhya Pradesh has also been alleged to be due to a fault in the bridge, which was not marked ‘unsafe’.

The annual rail budget earmarks a special fund for safety and bridge works. In the rail budget 2015-16, the government earmarked Rs. 560 crores over Rs. 465 crores in the previous year for bridge works, which is a 20 percent increase.

But the push in funding does not seem to translate much in terms of infrastructure maintenance. In 2012-13, 806 bridges were repaired,restructured, which in 2013-14 fell to 739, and then slumping to 672 bridges in 2014-15.

This certainly reflects the lethargy on the government’s part. In November 2014, the Minister of State for Railways Mukul Sinha told the Lok Sabha that “All railway bridges are fully safe and secure. There should be no concern.” 

During the last five years, 4338 bridges have been repaired / strengthened / rehabilitated / rebuilt on Indian Railways. It is a continuous process and is undertaken whenever so warranted by their physical condition as ascertained during these inspections and not on the basis of age.
— Mukul Sinha in the Lok Sabha, July 2015