Cummins And Indian Railways : 296 Dead And E. Coli

Cummins Marsun Thai Navy patrol boat Customer Corner

Earlier today, on X – link now in the menu if you’re reading on mobile – I took a swipe at the Cummins newsroom for becoming a shadow of its former self. Quiet, sporadic and occasionally sticking its head above the parapet before disappearing again.

Then, on 31 August 2026, Cummins suddenly found something worth publishing: “Partnering for Progress: Cummins and India’s Rail Transformation”.

Lovely.

Because when Cummins finally hands TCAP a named customer and a relationship stretching back more than 30 years, the least we can do is check the fucking customer.

More Than Thirty Years Of Progress

Indian Railways is not a conventional company. It is India’s enormous state-run national railway system, administered through the Ministry of Railways.

The Cummins and Indian Railways relationship stretches back more than 30 years. It began with engines and propulsion systems for power cars and tower cars before expanding into electric propulsion as India electrified its railway network. Today, Cummins says Indian Railways is approximately 99% electrified and presents itself as a long-standing technology partner helping the system move from diesel towards cleaner propulsion.

There is plenty of scale too. Cummins talks about local engineering, first-fit products, aftermarket support and a network of more than 3,500 engineers and service dealers supporting Indian Railways across India. It uses phrases like “trusted technology partner”.

Excellent. Customer Corner likes trust, especially when somebody has audited it.

Less than three weeks before Cummins published this celebration, India’s Comptroller and Auditor General had produced a considerably less polished account of progress on the same railway system.

Cummins brought the adjectives.

The auditor brought the fucking clipboard.

458 Stations Failed The Basics

CAG Report No. 31 of 2026 examined passenger amenities and sanitation at 512 non-suburban railway stations across 16 railway zones. Of those 512 stations, 458 – more than 89% – were deficient in at least one Minimum Essential Amenity.

These are not luxury spas, massage chairs or artisanal coffee counters. We are talking about drinking water, toilets, seating, platform shelters, fans, water coolers and signage – the sort of things normally required before anybody starts composing a press release about transformation.

CAG did not treat the findings as a handful of unlucky stations either. Its wider analysis identified systemic gaps rather than isolated cases.

That matters. A broken tap is maintenance and a delayed repair is management. When deficiencies survive across zones, categories, budgets, standards and years of railway administration, however, the problem has boarded a different fucking train.

The audit also found facilities for passengers with disabilities inadequate and non-compliant with requirements under India’s Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016. Among the deficiencies were ramps, accessible toilets, drinking-water arrangements, tactile pathways, lifts and passenger-information facilities.

The Money Was There

Emergency medical provision was another beauty. At 441 of the 512 stations inspected, neither an emergency medical room nor the medical box recommended by AIIMS was available.

Meanwhile, CAG examined 395 passenger-amenity works undertaken between 2019-20 and 2023-24 and found 59% were delayed, in some cases by more than four years. Poor planning, contractor failures and shortages of labour and materials all appeared in the explanations.

Eventually, someone might reasonably ask whether the problem was simply money. CAG did, and unfortunately that excuse did not arrive on time either.

Passenger-amenity budgets were underutilised by between 36% and 44% across the five-year period examined. Standards were already in place, money was available and passengers were certainly fucking there, yet a substantial chunk of the delivery remained theoretical.

By its conclusion, CAG was talking about deficiencies in “monitoring, enforcement and accountability at all levels”.

Now we are speaking TCAP.

Then They Tested The Water

The drinking-water findings are where Cummins’ decision to publish this particular partnership article in August becomes almost offensively funny.

Indian Railways had requirements for bacteriological testing, yet CAG found that required analysis had not been conducted at 59 inspected stations across six railway zones. Where samples were tested, some produced rather more life than anybody wanted.

Water-cooler samples tested positive for E. coli at eight stations, including Coimbatore, Palakkad Junction, Hyderabad, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, Bhiwandi Road, Kalyan, Lonavala and Madhupur. Platform-tap testing also identified coliform contamination, including E. coli.

The report was tabled on 12 August 2026. Indian Railways subsequently launched a special nationwide drive on 24 August covering the cleaning and disinfection of drinking-water tanks and filters, examination of pipelines and dispensing points, bacteriological testing and chlorine monitoring.

Seven days later, Cummins published “Partnering for Progress”.

You could not fucking schedule it better.

Cummins Water Works Would Like A Word

There is another reason the water finding deserves more than a passing paragraph.

Cummins operates Cummins Water Works, its global corporate-responsibility programme devoted to water security and access to safely managed drinking water and sanitation. According to Cummins, the programme has reached 7.4 million people since 2021, with projects operating internationally, including in India.

Good. Clean drinking water is important. Sanitation is important. Reliable infrastructure is important.

Cummins clearly understands all three because it has built an ESG programme around telling everybody how important they are. Then Corporate Communications moves across the website and presents Indian Railways as a shining case study in progress less than three weeks after the national auditor found E. coli in station drinking water and widespread failures in basic passenger amenities.

That does not make Cummins responsible for the water. It makes the editing fucking magnificent.

On one page, safe water demonstrates responsible corporate citizenship. On another, contaminated water apparently falls just outside the crop.

296 People Died

Then there is Balasore.

On 2 June 2023, the Coromandel Express approached Bahanaga Bazar station in Odisha. The signal permitted the train to proceed, but the route underneath it did something else.

Instead, the train was directed onto a loop line occupied by a stationary goods train and collided with it. Derailing coaches were then involved with another passenger train. The final official death toll recorded by the Government of India was 296, with hundreds more injured.

The Commissioner of Railway Safety investigated and centred its findings on failures involving signalling-circuit alteration and wiring work. Effectively, the train had been given permission to proceed while the physical route was set towards the occupied loop line.

That sentence should be read slowly because a railway signalling system exists to prevent exactly that sequence.

The CRS investigation identified wrong labelling that had remained undetected for years, deficiencies in alteration work and failures to follow prescribed checking procedures. Reporting on the inquiry also revealed that a wiring diagram from another location box had been used during the work.

The Warning Before Balasore

Then comes the bit that turns failure into warning.

A similar wrong-wiring incident had occurred at Bankra Nayabaz roughly two weeks before Balasore. The CRS concluded that corrective action following that earlier incident could have prevented the Balasore disaster.

There had already been a warning. Procedures existed and opportunities to learn existed too.

Then 296 people reached the end of the railway before the lesson reached the fucking system.

Give Indian Railways Its Due

The wider safety trend has improved substantially, and that belongs in the article.

Official Railway Ministry figures show consequential train accidents falling from 135 in 2014-15 to 16 in 2025-26, a reduction of roughly 88%. The accident index also fell from 0.11 to 0.01 while expenditure on safety-related activity increased substantially.

Good. TCAP does not need to vandalise a favourable statistic because an unfavourable one is sitting nearby.

Indian Railways can have improved its overall accident performance dramatically while Balasore remains an appalling example of what happens when signalling governance, checking procedures and warning signs fail simultaneously. Both statements fit on the same page: one shows progress, while the other shows why nobody should become intoxicated by the fucking headline.

Superfast In Name, Surcharge In Practice

Fortunately, Indian Railways also produces accountability stories where nobody dies.

Another CAG finding tabled in August concerned the superfast surcharge. Passengers pay an additional charge on trains classified as superfast and, to qualify, the relevant train is supposed to achieve an average speed of at least 55 km/h in both directions.

This is not a complicated standard. Fast enough, surcharge. Not fast enough, no surcharge.

Indian Railways found a third option.

CAG calculated that around ₹168 crore had been collected in superfast surcharges during 2022-23 from passengers travelling on more than 190 trains that did not satisfy the required speed criterion. Railway authorities subsequently accepted the audit point and corrective instructions were issued in November 2025.

That should have closed the matter. Instead, a later check of the relevant data in March 2026 found 100 of the 190 trains were still operating below the required average speed in one or both directions while the surcharge continued to be collected.

This may be my favourite piece of the whole audit universe.

The train is not superfast, yet the passenger still pays for superfast.

Apparently, the adjective travels considerably quicker than the fucking locomotive.

Signalling Appears Again

July 2026 brought another uncomfortable railway story. During a period of roughly 72 hours, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation arrested railway officials in three separate alleged bribery cases.

They are separate criminal investigations and allegations remain allegations unless established in court. Nevertheless, one stands out.

A Deputy Chief Signal & Telecommunication Engineer with South Eastern Railway was accused of receiving bribes in connection with contract-variation files and signalling and telecommunications work. The CBI alleged that the official had previously accepted ₹5 lakh and was then caught accepting a further ₹4 lakh at Howrah railway station.

There is no suggested connection between that case and Balasore, nor does there need to be. The subject is institutional control.

After a catastrophic signalling failure has killed 296 people, a separate allegation that a senior signalling engineer was taking money connected with signalling contract work is hardly the sort of current affairs item you frame above reception.

Meanwhile, another CBI case involved a Senior Divisional Materials Manager accused of demanding ₹1.70 lakh from a supplier in return for processing payments and allegedly threatening that the company would receive no future railway contracts if money was not paid.

Again, proceedings will determine guilt. The arrest itself is not the editorial punch.

The procurement environment is.

Fake Parts, Real Train

Then Central Railway managed to make procurement even more literal.

Following an online tender, the railway ordered 325 Motor Protection Circuit Breakers from a supplier. The equipment was delivered in January 2026 accompanied by purported manufacturer test certificates.

In March, smoke was detected in a Punjab Mail coach during an electrical incident after protection equipment reportedly failed to trip as intended. Central Railway started looking.

According to the resulting investigation and FIR reporting, the original manufacturer said the supplier was not an authorised dealer. Experts subsequently identified supplied units as counterfeit, while questions arose over the accompanying test documentation.

An FIR followed and the investigation remains ongoing.

No conspiracy theory is required. The procurement system bought electrical protection equipment, counterfeit units allegedly entered the supply chain and equipment eventually reached railway rolling stock before smoke appeared.

Only then did the paperwork begin travelling in the opposite direction.

There is your transportation ecosystem.

Cummins Has A Much Tidier Version

Now return to Cummins.

Its article contains electrification, technology, local engineering, customer support, Made-in-India capability, decarbonisation and more than thirty years of partnership. Eventually we arrive at the image Cummins wants: a trusted technology provider helping one of the world’s largest railway systems transform.

Individually, plenty of those claims may be perfectly true. That is what makes corporate PR more interesting than ordinary lying.

You do not have to invent the picture.

You just choose the fucking frame.

Cummins gives readers propulsion systems, electrification statistics and partnership milestones. Outside that frame sits an August CAG report documenting deficient essential amenities at 89% of the inspected stations, disability-access failures, delayed projects, substantial budget underspend and E. coli in drinking water.

Nearby sits another audit finding involving ₹168 crore in irregular superfast surcharges. Further back along the line is Balasore: 296 dead after signalling failures. Current paperwork also adds alleged bribery involving railway officials and an investigation into counterfeit electrical protection equipment entering the supply chain.

Cummins chose what belonged in its portrait.

Customer Corner chooses differently.

This Is Why Customer Corner Exists

The point of this series has never been that Cummins causes every failure committed by anybody who buys its products. That would be stupid.

The point is that Cummins repeatedly uses customers, partners and projects as evidence about Cummins. Here is the customer, here is the partnership, and here comes the technology, the progress and the trust.

Fine.

TCAP looks too.

Once a corporation turns a customer into a character witness, there is no rule saying the rest of us must interview the witness exclusively through the corporate communications department.

If Cummins wants Indian Railways standing beside it as evidence of progress, TCAP is entitled to notice what India’s own public auditors have been saying about Indian Railways – especially when the audit landed nineteen fucking days before the press release.

That is not guilt by association.

It is brochure versus record, and the record has considerably more pages.

Good News About The Newsroom

So, some good news. The Cummins newsroom is not quite as anaemic as it had started to look.

On 31 August, it managed to produce a three-decade customer relationship, thousands of support personnel, one of the world’s largest railway systems and enough audit material to keep Customer Corner occupied for the afternoon. Part of it, anyway.

Excellent work. Please continue.

Publish the partner, tell us about the innovation, mention sustainability and give us the customer success story. Put “Partnering for Progress” in the headline if the mood takes you.

Meanwhile, TCAP can handle the other side of the fucking paperwork.

Cummins writes the partner story.

We read the audit.

Lee Thompson – Founder, The Cummins Accountability Project

Customer Corner : Indian Railways – 296 Dead, E. Coli In The Water And A Cummins Press Release