India Puts Pause on New Coal Plants to Boost Clean Energy
TimeMAY 2023
Friday's accident, unfortunately, highlights India's worrying railway safety record. In 2021, more than 16K people were killed in nearly 18K railway accidents across the country, mainly from collisions between trains. Countless lives will be lost if PM Narendra Modi's administration continues to launch high-speed trains instead of addressing the issues of aging infrastructure, poor traffic management systems, and overworked loco pilots.
Despite facing a plethora of problems, India's railway network is moving towards modernization, including the face-lifting of over 200 railway stations and the construction of 100K km of new railway tracks over the next 20 years. While the cause of Friday's crash hasn't been ascertained yet, Indian authorities are moving quickly in their investigation and search and rescue, which, for now, is rightly prioritizing victims and their families.