Read the following text below!
Passage 1
With the death toll now at 300 and over 1,000 injured, the tragic accident in Balasore, eastern Odisha has once again focused attention on the issue of railway safety in India. The crash was one of the country's deadliest train accidents in decades and occurred at a time when the government has been trying to make rail travel a pleasurable, and, more importantly, safe experience. Such crashes are far from unprecedented in India. In 1999, a collision between two trains in West Bengal killed 285 people, and in 2010, 145 died in the same state when a passenger train derailed and was hit by a cargo train. More recently, in 2016, 160 people died when a passenger train traveling between the cities of Indore and Patna slipped off its tracks.
For the last few years, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been trying to stimulate its rail modernization push by introducing high-speed, automated trains in one of the largest and busiest rail networks in the world. This includes a plan to have 100% electrification of the railways by 2024 and make the network carbon-neutral by 2030. But experts have blamed crumbling infrastructure for causing numerous accidents, raising questions about the money spent on train maintenance and track renewal.
The railways continue to be a lifeline in India, carrying around 13 million passengers a day. In recent years, the government has spent billions modernizing India's colonial-era railways, including introducing superfast trains but spending on maintenance and basic safety measures and upgrades have been falling, and a lack of staff has meant allocated funds for track upgrades has not been spent.
According to an assessment by the government's controller and auditor general, 163 of the 217 "consequential train accidents" from 2017 to 2018 and 2020 to 2021 were caused by derailments, accounting for around 75% of accidents. The report, submitted to parliament last December, said a major factor in these accidents was the lack of maintenance on railway tracks. Funds for track renewal had declined, the report said, and, in many cases, were not being fully utilized. Fires, accidents at unmanned level crossings, and collisions were the other causes of accidents cited by the report. What is more, concerns have been flagged on the acute shortage of manpower, especially in track safety, with many posts lying vacant in departments across the network.
Passage 2
The railways minister, Ashwini Vaishnaw, and members of the railway board said an investigation is being conducted and focused on a failure of the track management system, which automatically coordinates and controls the signals for oncoming trains and is meant to ensure they are always directed to empty tracks. It appeared this automatic "interlocking system" had malfunctioned on Friday, sending the Coromandel Express train down the loop track. Vaishnaw, who is facing calls to resign, said the "root cause and the people responsible for the criminal act" had been determined but he would not say if the failure was caused by a technical fault, human error or sabotage.
The government also requested that the central bureau of investigation (CBI), a government agency, begin a criminal investigation into the collision, an indication that arrests could be made. A CBI team travelled to the site on Monday evening, seeking to establish if any criminal tampering was involved in the signal failure. Visiting the site on Saturday, the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, said: "Those found guilty will be severely punished".
Political opponents accused the Modi government of trying to shift focus on to an investigation into criminal negligence by an individual, rather than shouldering responsibility for the disaster and examining endemic safety issues on the railway network. Mallikarjun Kharge, the president of the opposition Congress party, accused the government of "apathy and negligence" over rail safety, alleging that "red flags" were ignored, and questioning why a criminal investigation agency was looking into the incident. "The CBI is meant to investigate crimes, not railway accidents," said Kharge.
Which statement is the most effective comparison of the two passages' theme?