India’s rail network is beyond vast. The equivalent of almost the entire population of Australia squeezes onto its 22,300 trains every single day — an almost unfathomable 23 million people. And measuring out at almost 115,000 kilometres of track, it’s the fourth largest rail network in the world.
Not fit for purpose
With stats like that, it’s no surprise that maintaining the railways is far from easy. But the state-owned organization, Indian Railways, is not alone; they have partnered with Siemens Ltd. India where they work together to ensure the expansive network is fit for service.
Esha Kaul, Digitalization Business Lead at Siemens Mobility, India, is familiar with the challenges and opportunities involved; after all, it’s her role to find new ways to approach the network’s ongoing maintenance. “The network is huge,” she says. “And if you look at the level of infrastructure we have, the quality is relatively old and depleted.”
Part of the issue springs from the antiquity of the network. Some routes are almost 200 years old, with the first passenger train opening in 1853 to carry passengers for 34 kilometers between Bori Bunder and Thane. “The railways were built when India was still a British colony,” she says. “While there are new railway networks and tracks, there is still a very big section that has the legacy infrastructure.”
It’s an extremely complex task to maintain such an extensive network built so many years previously. “Ideally one has to shutdown the system and undergo maintenance regularly and then put the system back in place, but what happens is the system unfortunately doesn’t get its due maintenance,” she says.
Services can also be inconsistent, with India’s slowest train, The Nilgiri Express, traveling at an average speed of 10 kilometers per hour. The fastest? The New Delhi-Bhopal Shatabdi Express, which reaches 195 kilometers when covering the route between Delhi and Agra. India’s least punctual train is the Manduadih-Rameswaram Weekly Express with an average delay of 11.5 hours per trip.
But despite its issues, rail travel is essential to India’s growth — especially when it comes to trade and employment. “The railway is actually the lifeline of the Indian industry because it carries freight to and fro, and it carries the people from one part to another,” says Esha. “It’s the most cost-effective travel for the Indian people.”
So even with the risks, train travel is unavoidable for many. “It’s the backbone of the people,” she says. “Even if there is an accident, the next day there’s a lot of resilience. Despite the accident, it’s not that people get scared. They get up and use the railway network again because they don’t, to be frank, have a choice. The railway network is something that is completely indispensable, it’s something that is very, very vital to everyone in India.”
Old problem, new solutions
Just because something has been done a certain way for 200 years, doesn’t mean it’s the only solution. Indian Railways and Siemens are working together to transform the network with fresh thinking, innovative ideas and state of the art technology.
Esha says, “Siemens has been a partner of Indian Railways for a very long time, so we thought ‘Can we do something we haven’t done in the past which could then be replicated in other countries?’”
It’s part of her responsibility to spark innovative ways to approach these age-old issues. “This problem is not just relevant for the Indian landscape, this is dominant in other countries — and nobody has a concrete solution,” she says. “With digitalization, the traditional industries are changing. It’s no longer that something is developed in the Western world and then is adapted in the emerging markets, it’s also the other way around. If you’re able to solve a problem in this part of the world, that solution will be definitely relevant in the West because it’s already gone through very difficult testing.”
To find a solution, Esha and her team explored various technologies currently within and outside of the Siemens portfolio. Armed with their research, they focused on deploying more than one solution to comprehensively monitor the railway track breakage.
The work is still very much underway, but the idea is that Siemens will acquire a vast amount of track data which will then be analyzed through various algorithms to detect rail fractures. By working towards a data-led solution like this, it means issues can be pinpointed before there is a problem, ultimately making track derailments less likely.
Using India as a test-bed offers the opportunity to really impact the future of rail travel. “In India, the railway conditions are extreme considering the number of passengers, the age of the infrastructure and the maintenance activity,” she says. “If we’re able to develop a suitable solution for such a hostile environment, it is sure to work for other countries where the environment is not too extreme.”
Innovation that delivers for everyone — not just a few
Since taking on the role more than two years ago, Esha has changed her viewpoint considerably when it comes to digitalization. “The moment we talk about digitalization, people think of technology like big turbines, steam engines, or rockets, because that’s what we associate with technology,” she says. “When I was given the role, I was also of the view that we have to build something big and fancy, something that people would like to come and see and say ‘Oh, this is innovation.”
“But then, the definition of innovation that I have understood over a period of time is ‘Finding answers to challenges and trying to solve a problem for society’. If you are able to do these two, if you are able to solve a problem using data, that is digitalization. It doesn’t have to be too fancy, it doesn’t have to be too elaborate. It doesn’t have to be too lustrous, but it has to be something that creates value for the customer.”
A job with real meaning
Esha’s job impacts the lives of millions of people, and the weight of responsibility has not gone unnoticed. “It gives meaning to my life because we’re addressing a very big problem,” she says. “It gives me relevance. I say to myself, ‘Esha, you are getting up in the morning and you are trying to solve a problem, you are trying to do something good for the society’. And it gives me that kick, every time we deliver. Every time we try to solve even a bit of a problem, we know that we’re one step closer to the larger goal, which is trying to do something sustainable and meaningful.”
Evidently not one to shy from immense tasks, Esha wants to change the future. “This is what I want to do for the country, this is what I want to do for myself,” she says. “At Siemens, you have an opportunity every day to enhance your existing skills and acquire new ones. It’s just a matter of putting in the right efforts and just telling yourself you can deliver. This is an organization which can actually make your dreams come true.”
Esha is a Digitalization Business Lead at Siemens Mobility, India. After graduating from the University of Mumbai in 2007, she started working at Siemens as a Graduate Engineering Trainee. She lives in Mumbai with her family. Find out more about working at Siemens.
Illustrations: Danilo Agutoli
