Special isssue

This paper examines the dynamics that shape the limits of political action in India's railway system, elucidating how this vast, complex, and opaque institution impedes the participation of specific groups and the politicisation of certain issues. The paper contextualises this through an empirical investigation of human accidents in Mumbai's commuter railways, where systemic processes such as the techno-legal classification of human accidents as minor incidents; the criminalisation of footboard travel and track crossing; and fragmented state accountability, have historically intersected to deny visibility, care, and political rights to victims. The paper then delineates the process through which this violence was politicised in the 1990s through the embodied efforts of commuters and various accident-affected persons. By generating their own datasets on incident frequency, nature, and outcome; proposing a parallel system of civilianised emergency care; and mobilising a human rights framework through the judiciary, these activists sought to extract human loss from the narrow confines of the railway's techno-legality, bringing it to the forefront of public consciousness and embedding it within broader debates on citizenship and moral accountability.