I've covered enough technology and infrastructure stories across India to know this truth: progress here leaves bloodstains. Last Saturday's pre dawn horror in Assam proves it. A train hurtling through Hojai district at speeds incompatible with life met a herd of wild Asian elephants crossing its path. The emergency brakes screamed. The laws of physics shrugged. Seven elephants, including calves still wobbling on uncertain legs, were crushed into pulp. Five train carriages buckled sideways, an afterthought to the massacre. Railway officials later buried the bodies, but the stench of hypocrisy will linger far longer.

Let me be blunt. This wasn't an accident. It was arithmetic. India's rail network, the world's fourth largest, is expanding at a pace that treats environmental safeguards like quaint superstitions. Corridors designated for elephant crossings? More theoretical than real, vanishing under budget cuts and bureaucratic amnesia. The Northeast Frontier Railway professes shock this collision occurred outside a designated zone as if elephants received memos about approved pathways. Herds follow ancient migratory routes, not rail ministry paperwork. When concrete and steel carve through forests, animals die. That's not tragedy. That's policy.

Here’s the unspoken equation governing this slaughter: India prioritizes passenger trains reaching destinations minutes faster over preventing entire species from being erased. The train in question was reportedly obeying nighttime speed limits, but those limits are jokes. 50 km/h? 70? Irrelevant when braking distances exceed visibility in foggy darkness. I've ridden these routes, watched forests blur past windows. Drivers can’t spot elephants until they're close enough to hear their trumpets. By then, momentum owns the outcome. This isn't engineering. It’s Russian roulette with locomotives.

Three layers of failure enabled this massacre, each more infuriating than the last. First, the surveillance farce. Railways brag about AI enabled cameras and vibration sensors along elephant corridors. But corridors cover less than 5% of actual elephant movement areas. On paper, Assam has nearly 6,000 elephants. On the ground, they’re ghosts in a maze of tea plantations and rail tracks. Second, enforcement theater. Speed restrictions exist, but I've seen locomotive black boxes doctored, officials bribed, schedules prioritized over safety. Third, the grotesque prioritization. When that train derailed, authorities swiftly cleared the line. Passenger convenience restored. The elephants? Dumped into mass graves while social media posted RIP hashtags.

Now consider the human cost. Not just the emotional wreckage for forest rangers or tribal communities who revere these animals, but the literal price tags. Compensation for dead elephants tops $20,000 per animal, taxpayer money spent to subsidize corporate negligence. Railway budgets balloon while conservation groups beg for funds to create underpasses or acoustic deterrents. The worst part? This isn't new. Over 200 elephants have been train killed since 2010. Each death prompts handwringing press conferences. Zero systemic change follows.

Let's demolish the myth that technology alone can fix this. An app launched last year alerts train crews about elephant sightings. Wonderful. Now imagine relying on spotty 3G in remote Assam while a 50 ton locomotive bears down on shadows. Drones with thermal cameras? Tested in Karnataka, abandoned when batteries died faster than enthusiasm. Real solutions require rewriting India's growth manifesto. Slow down trains at night. Halt expansion into critical habitats. Redirect funds from bullet train fantasies to wildlife bridges. But that demands courage, not code.

History will judge this moment. India styles itself as a civilization that worships nature. Ganesha, the elephant headed god, graces temples and boardrooms. Yet actual elephants die screaming under wheels made in those same industrial parks. The dissonance chokes me. We deploy satellites to track tiger populations but can't spare flashlights for track inspectors. We export IT geniuses while our forests bleed. We are becoming exactly what ancient texts warned against: clever monsters.

Wildlife experts whisper truths too uncomfortable for primetime. Elephant herds are fracturing. Calves orphaned in collisions starve or turn violent. Matriarchs who memorize safe routes for decades are dying first, leaving disoriented survivors. This isn't random. It's eradication by increments. Each dead elephant makes the next collision easier, herds shrinking until rails rule unchallenged. Railways calculate compensation costs, not extinction risks. The math always favors steel.

But here's what haunts me beyond statistics. That final instant before impact, when the driver saw dozens of eyes reflecting his headlight. Brakes screeching. Mothers shielding calves. Tusks scraping metal. The silence afterward, broken only by injured calves crying for herds that will never answer. We did this. Our hunger for speed, our obsession with expansion, our reckless faith that nature would simply step aside. Elephants don’t understand progress. They understand family. And we just killed seven of theirs.

The next time you ride an Indian train, lean out when it slices through forests. Feel the wind. Smell the crushed leaves. And know this: beneath those wheels lie bones, untold and unmourned, of every creature that believed the forest was still theirs. Velocity has victims. Development demands sacrifices. But when the blood on the tracks includes calves, we’ve crossed from ambition into atrocity. India must choose. Trains can wait. Extinction won’t.