Lifeline Railways: The way forward

  

VIEWPOINT

AMITABH SHUKLA

I sometimes wonder about the hype and hoopla associated with the Railway Budget every year and fail to understand why do you still need a separate Railway Budget when this could easily be a part of the general budget.

This year, the issue becomes all the more important as Railway fares and freight rates were hiked a fortnight before the Budget, which could reduce it to a meaningless paper work and jugglery with the figures like every year. So the challenge before the new government is to come out with a policy document which has a Vision for the next decade or so rather than merely doling out statistics.  

Railway Minister Sadananda Gowda would present his first Railway Budget in Parliament on July 8 but the major part of it, that is increase in passenger fare and freight rates has already been done. So going by the past trends of other railway ministers in the UPA, NDA and earlier the Congress, Gowda would announce some new trains, extension of existing trains, electrification of a few routes, introduction of Bullet trains a few years from now, increased focus on safety, unmanned railway crossings etc. But if he does merely that, it would be a travesty of the whole exercise and people would question the very logic of having a separate rail budget.

A new government under Narendra Modi has taken over and obviously there is a huge expectation from it. In fact, the expectation is so much that if the Railway Budget and then the general Budget two days later on July 10 becomes a routine exercise and does not drastically break from the past practices, the people would feel let down.

Though almost everything which the Railway Budget would carry on July 8 must have been put in black and white and placed in the briefcase which Gowda would open in the Lok Sabha after flashing it to the waiting camera persons outside the imposing building of the Parliament House, still there is a wish list. As the government did not wait for the railway budget to announce a hike, it can explore the options throughout the year.

The first and foremost priority for the railways is to bridge the massive supply-demand gap in passenger accommodation in the profitable long distance trains and routes. If a person wants to go to Kolkata, Guwahati, Patna, Hyderabad or any other city from New Delhi on a short notice, he is unlikely to get a reserved accommodation in any train. This is true even for the off-peak season. If the passenger wants to book a ticket for the peak seasons of April-June and October-December, then even purchasing a ticket two months in advance cannot guarantee you a reserved accommodation in several trains.

The shortage is so acute that passengers feel frustrated and simply do not know what to do. In several sectors, the alternative is the expensive air travel but even this facility is not available to an overwhelming majority of the people as only train connectivity is available to their home towns in smaller cities and towns.

When tickets are bought and sold through the computer, the railways must be having accurate figures about demand in specific sectors, routes and trains and specific months and days when there is massive demand. I simply fail to understand why the organisation doesn’t introduce more trains in those specific routes in specific time period after creating a database of records of the last five years. How would a person go to a place in emergency if he doesn’t get a reserved berth? Tatkal system and special trains are merely eyewash. You simply cannot get a Tatkal ticket come what may if you cannot get a normal ticket two months in advance.  Railways should first study the problem sector wise, route wise and train wise in detail and work out a solution how to bridge this massive supply-demand gap.

The Railways remain the lifeline of the nation and would remain so till the next half a century given the way our roads and air traffic is expanding and shaping up. In the last ten years of the rule UPA, roads remained the most neglected area and all the good work done by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee regime was lost. That is the reason why the responsibility on the railways is bigger as the infrastructural engine for growth.

Another area where the new Government needs to look into seriously is outsourcing the Railway stations or simply selling them to the private sector, the way bigger airports of the country have already been done. Of course, whoever gets into this would use the massive railway real estate in and around the stations for building commercial entities. But then, that is perhaps the only way out if you want to make the railway stations look like airports. It could be started as a pilot project at a small railway station somewhere and in a phased manner introduced in other stations.

During the inauguration of Udhampur-Katra rail line project in Jammu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi indicated of a greater participation of the private sector when he called for railways to have better facilities than airports. “We want the railway stations to have better facilities than airports. This is our dream and it is not a difficult thing to do and this is economically viable too,” Modi said, adding, “Private parties would also be ready to invest because this is a good project economically and will benefit everyone. This would be a win-win situation project and we want to move ahead in this direction in the coming days.” The new government has shown willingness to increase private investment in the Railways and the railway budget should list out the steps clearly and unambiguously, drawing a roadmap for the next five years to a decade.

Coming on to the expansion of railway network and doubling of tracks to increase passenger and freight volume, the government could consider converting Railways into a Public Sector Undertaking (PSU). A typical government department, which Railways is at present, may find it difficult to acquire land for laying new railway lines, building new stations and charting a new course correction. If converted into a PSU, some of the handicaps which the railways face at present would be gone. There would be a new work culture like that of the Delhi Metro or the Konkan Railways. In fact, some of the railway work has already been corporatized through PSUs and all of them are working rather effectively. There are presently 11 PSUs under Ministry of Railways and all are not only profit making but also have a work culture similar to the private sector. Obviously, there is a case here in converting the entire ministry into a PSU to take on the new challenges effectively.

There is much hype about the proposed Bullet trains. As this would be extremely a costly affair and severely curtail other requirements of the Railways, getting the private sector into this could perhaps yield better dividends. Take,  for example, the Delhi-Chandigarh route for the bullet train. The cost of this could be so prohibitive given the sky rocketing prices of land and real estate in the region that its feasibility itself would be questioned. For such short distances, it would be better if the speed of the train is increased. At present, the Shatabdi Express takes 3.20 hours to cover the distance of 255 km. If the speed is increased and it takes 2 hours, there could be a situation where you save the money involved in constructing the tracks for Bullet trains and instead use it for up-gradation of other infrastructure. There are indications that the Modi government would look for constructing a “diamond quadrilateral” of high speed trains and ensuring quality facilities for passengers on these sectors.

Thinking out of the box is the need of the hour. As the lifeline of the country, Railways are crucial for economic growth and the new government has to break from the past and make the Railway Budget a Vision document rather than a press release on new trains, change in timings of trains and a few facilities here and there. If the latter remains the case, it is better to do away with the Railway Budget altogether. (July 7, 2014) 

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