NEW DELHI, July 12: Indian train drivers complain of exhausting working hours and a lack of basic safety equipment — some of the numerous hazards facing one of the busiest and most deadly rail networks in the world.

At the weekend, two separate crashes left 69 dead and about 200 injured after a derailment in northern Uttar Pradesh state and a bomb explosion on tracks in the restive northeastern state of Assam.

While new shiny airport infrastructure is springing up across the country, the Indian railways — a much romanticised legacy of British colonial rule — often appear stuck in a time-warp.

After decades of under-investment, the rolling stock is old, speeds are low, signalling is done manually in some areas, and a lack of fencing makes the network a soft target for militants.

Drivers say they are unfairly blamed for the frequent accidents, while the politicians in charge dodge their responsibility to the 18 million people that use the network daily.

K. Parthasarthy, a train driver and trade unionist in the All India Loco Running Staff Association (AILRSA), said he regularly drives for 13-14 hours non-stop.

“It's exhausting, especially on a fast train with frequent signal stops,” he said. “If I feel sleepy even for a few seconds, it can cause a terrible accident.” One of the features lacking on the majority of long-distance trains is the so-called “dead man's handle,” a switch that the driver must press at all times, he says.

If the driver falls asleep or suffers a heart attack, for example, his or her finger slips from the switch and the brakes are automatically applied.

Most of the creaking system, the world's second-largest under a single management, also lacks anti-collision devices and a powerful independent regulator to monitor operations, observers say.

“When accidents happen, everyone immediately blames the driver,” Parthasarthy said. “Instead of going after the individual, they should take a

look at the whole system.” Railways expert G. Raghuram, a professor at the Indian Institute of Management in the western city of Ahmedabad, said that the government needed to buy modern safety equipment and upgrade the signalling system.

“The government has been dithering about anti-collision devices, wondering when they should get it, from which supplier, and so on, when they really just need to get on with it,” he said.

The last railways minister, the arch-populist Mamata Banerjee, announced in February a 40 per cent hike in the annual railway budget to Rs576 billion ($12.9 billion).

But critics say successive budget hikes have failed to improve safety records, as only a miniscule amount is spent on upgrading key areas like signalling and track maintenance.

Indian Railways has an engorged payroll and is financially inefficient with operating costs, including salaries, accounting for more than 90 percent of revenue.

The National Crime Records Bureau, which tracks the causes of fatalities across India, says that 25,705 people died on the railways in 2009.

The data is not broken down, but a vast majority of these deaths are people falling from the open doors of carriages or being hit on the tracks, which are mostly unsecured.

The lack of fencing and transport police make some lines vulnerable to attacks from the numerous rebel groups fighting the government from their hide-outs in forests and other remote areas.

The incident in the northeastern state of Assam on Sunday saw a bomb planted on the tracks by a suspected separatist group.

The Delhi-Kolkata route -- on which Sunday's accident in Uttar Pradesh occurred -- was targeted in May 2010 by Maoist rebels, who derailed a high-speed passenger train claiming 151 lives.

I.M.S. Rana, a former chairman of the Indian Railway Board which runs the network, said the number of trains plying the 64,015 kilometres (39,777 miles) of national track should be reduced.

“We need a policy that should put a restriction on the number of trains and also be strict about overloading. There is not much time for maintenance,” Rana told AFP.

But this would put further pressure on India's overstretched road network and exacerbate transportation bottlenecks that are already crimping the country's economic growth.

In an editorial Monday, the Indian Express newspaper said the root of many of the problems was a political tradition of successive coalition governments awarding the railway ministry portfolio as a sop to important allies.

“This practice should be ended immediately and the ministry given to a responsible individual,” it said.—AFP