RAILWAYS FACING PROBLEMS: COMMON MAN TAKES THE BRUNT , Is restructuring of the Railway Board a solution?, Is adding infrastructure a solution to the problems?

 

RAILWAYS FACING PROBLEMS: COMMON MAN TAKES THE BRUNT 

by Abhijeet Anand

Is restructuring of the Railway Board a solution?

Is adding infrastructure a solution to the problems?

Narendra Modi has spoken often about modernizing Railways. But promises of modernizing Railways has not been fulfilled. Railways has been taking some populist measures to please the public but developing railways is a tricky thing as one has to invest the money that is earned from revenue into infrastructure; infrastructure being the most crucial aspects of Railways. One needs good facility for coach and loco production. At times, they have to be imported also. There is a need for new stations and stations have to be redeveloped. Also, the quality of food that is served on the Railways should be good. Apart from this maintenance of trains has to be done. But the revenue comes primarily from the commuters in the form of ticket fares or freight charges. Railways is also trying to commercially utilise the space it has. However, the returns on commercial utilization has not been very encouraging so far. Increasing the non-fare revenue has been the agenda of the BJP government so that the commuters are not burdened with fare hikes. An ambitious target was set but it has not been achieved.

But at the same time, fare hikes become a sensitive issue and is politicised and also condemned as unethical since Railways has not been able to live up to the expectations of the masses. Punctuality and safety are the only two major concerns of a passenger. In this scenario, fare hike has not happened for the past many years.

Flexi-fare has been adding to the revenues of the Railways. However, the ministry is trying to review this policy as it has taken a political issue. It has been opposed by sections of the society. The cost of second AC ticket in Rajdhani may come at par with a first class AC ticket. Along with the flexi-fare system, Railways has been experimenting with several ideas like Vikalp to reduce the losses suffered. Then there are trains like Tatkal Express and Suvidha Express which run during vacations or Puja festival like Chhath and Durga Puja when the rush is high and getting confirmed tickets is a big problem. But the cost for passengers of these tickets can be high and it can reach three times the actual fare.

Railways has been trying to add to the infrastructure it has. But, it is at a very slow pace. It will take time to completely renew the tracks that have been in operation since the Railways came into being. One has to block the traffic at times leading to cancellation of trains and speed restrictions are also imposed on sections where maintenance work is going on. Many ambitious projects of Railways are hanging in balance owing to technical issues. Chenab Rail Bridge that was being planned for being opened in 2019-20 is nowhere near completion. Railway sources that it will take another at least three to four years. The section under which Chenab Bridge falls has many tunnels. Completing a tunnel itself is a challenge. E Sreedharan, who played a scintillating role in completion of Konkan Railway, had advised against the project but the Railways went ahead with it. Like this there are several bridge projects that are to be completed and is scheduled to be completed by 2019.

Railways is the lifeline of the country in many ways. It provides ancillary employment apart from direct employment to around 13 lakh people in the country. According to sources there is a vacancy of 1.8 lakh personnel at present. There are around 4.5 lakh contractual employees in Railways. There is a mismatch between the timing of recruitment and retirements creating vacant positions in the Railways. While railways has decided to recruit 90,000 people this year, over 40,000 are going to retire this year.

Knee jerk reaction have been resorted at times when rail accidents take place. Putting things on the ‘right track’ seems almost impossible. A major reshuffle in the Railways took place at a time when two railway accidents happened back to back in August. Cabinet Minister, Piyush Goyal was brought in as Railways minister who made a statement that safety is the top priority. Even the Railway Board Chairman was relieved and Ashwani Lohani, the CMD of Air India then took over. Decisions were fast-paced by Goyal.

Goyal put on fast-track the decision to restructure the Railway Board. A decision was taken to trim the Railway Board and post officers outside the Board. The idea was to increase the number of field officers. Restructuring of Railway Board has been on the agenda of the Railways for a long time. New directorates has also been created in the Board. A directorate on mobility which has been doing work on assessing feasibility of semi-high speed rail network was set up. A Member for Safety in the Railway Board was also suggested as part of restructuring.  

Goyal took the decision of increasing Divisional Rail Managers (DRMs) in every division to two. However, the attitude of the officers has been questioned. Many officers have been found to be hiring trackmen for the purpose of their domestic work. Trackmen are responsible for checking any defects in the tracks. But cause-effect relation to accidents has been denied by Railways. According to railway minister, the number of accidents has for the first time come down to two digits in over five decades.

Rail Development Authority (RDA) which will be an advisory body on many issues has been proposed. It will suggest to it ways to increase the revenues, make it safer and modernise the Railways. But being an advisory body, its ideas are more likely to be sidelined.  The decision of creating a Transformation Cell was taken almost as soon as the BJP government took over in 2014. The idea was to have a body that will scale up the operations to meet the future needs of the Railways. But Transformation for a huge body like the Railways is an on-going process. Moreover, it looks like the Transformation Cell was created just to give the public a better image of Railways.

Railways claim that all efforts are being made to remove Unmanned Level Crossings, a major cause of accidents. It shall be replaced by Road Under Bridges (RUBs) and Road Over Bridges (ROBs). But the reality is that in only one zone, the Railways have been successful in replacing UMLC. In 2017-18, there were three accidents due to UMLC. Demands have been made to make these crossings manned. But the Ministry again said that it is drivers’ negligence which is responsible for the accidents. The railway network has 5,792 such crossings without gates for regulating road traffic.

Quality of food where the services are being outsourced is not very good. When Lalu Prasad Yadav was the Rail Minister, he said that Railways cannot provide home-cooked food and therefore in a way he justified that the quality may not be as good as that is expected from the Railways. It is the contractors which supply the food and the system of having pantries in the train is almost on the brink of being aborted. The process of annulling the contract of a food supplier and selection and appointment of a new contractor is very tedious. That will happen only when the catering inspector gets a complaint. Passengers generally don’t take the pain of registering a complaint. So all this goes on and on.

Base kitchens which supply food are very less in number compared to the number of trains that is to be catered for. At times, the food is cooked a little far away from the station and then brought to the station to be supplied to the coaches. There is a plan to increase the number of base kitchens to hundred. But that should take time.

Railways has at times kept catering with itself and then transferred the responsibility to Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC).Last year it transferred the responsibility to IRCTC. The issue that is of concern is that there is a nexus of caterers with a few caterers having a large chunk of the catering contracts. This affects the quality of the food that is served on the trains. Railways has not been able to break this cartel nexus. Railways has experimented with E-Catering also. In this one can order food online. But this option is available at a few major stations. The caterer lobby is against E-Catering.  

Railways is planning to introduce high-speed rail network between Ahmedabad and Mumbai at a huge cost. But, at present semi-high speed networks are still in the planning stage. The only semi-high speed rail network  at present is between Delhi and Agra on which Gatimaan Express runs. Plans are on build a semi-high speed rail network between Delhi and Chandigarh, Delhi and Kolkata and Delhi and Mumbai as part of ‘Mission Raftaar’. Constructing  semi-high speed corridors are itself a challenge for the Railways. In order that the speed of the train hits the maximum of 160 km per hour, technical modifications of the railway track has to be done. For instance, all the curves on the railway track between Delhi  and Agra had to be removed for the semi-high speed corridor.

Semi-high speed corridors demands lot of investment. A dedicated corridor would be required for semi-high speed rail network. For upgradation of the routes of Delhi-Kolkata and Delhi-Mumbai for semi-high speed rail network, Rs 17,000 crore was earmarked by the Railways.

Trial runs were done using Talgo coaches that were brought from Spain to reduce the time taken between Delhi and Mumbai. Talgo is meant to tough the high speed of 200 kmph. But, that proposal has so far been put in the cold shelf. However, Railways introduced a superfast train which is like the Rajdhani that plies between Nizamuddin and Bandra Terminus about 14 hours. This is a trial run that has been going on for the three and half months and is likely to be extended.

At the moment, semi-high speed trains seem to be more cost-effective because the Bullet Train project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad itself is going to cost the Railways around Rs 1 lakh crore. Integrated Coach Factory (ICF) of Chennai has delivered a rake that can hit a speed of 160 kmph. It is called Train 18. But it is not yet clear on which route it will run.  

The ministry wants to make many trains superfast. In the recent Budget the speeds of at least 40 trains were increased and they were called superfast trains. Many say that this is a ploy to impose Superfast Charges on these trains as the speeds were increased marginally and the Superfast tag was given to the train. Despite the speeds being increased of these superfast trains, these are trains which get delayed the most.

Goyal had also announced that the speed of 700 trains will be increased. But at the same time, the delays of trains is very commonplace and getting reservations in a train is difficult. Railways has experimented with Vikalp which will help a passenger find accommodation in another train if there is no availability in a train. A passenger will have to give an option on the reservation form. But, it is being said that since most of the trains are running packed, even this scheme is hardly helping the passengers.

Adding coaches to a train which has a long waiting list of passengers is also an option with the Railways. And this is being done frequently according to sources. But there are constraints here also. It is conditional on the fact whether Rolling Stock (Coaches) in a ready condition is available at the moment. Also, theRolling Stock should be of the type that is compatible to the train. For instance whether it is ICF or LHB coach? Now, the question of redevelopment of the Railway Stations also arises here. A railway station is meant to handle trains with certain number of coaches only. Railway Station must be redeveloped so that it can accommodate trains with more number of coaches.  

 A few PPP projects have been running for redeveloping railway station. A swanky railway station which will have a hotel also is being developed at Gandhinagar under PPP model. There are others also like Habibganj. But, the issue remains what will happen to stations that are already there and which cannot accommodate trains have more than 18 coaches. That reduces the chances that more coaches can be added to trains that are running fully reserved. Railways sources say that Indian Rail Station Corporation has not been successful in redeveloping stations.

There is a renewed focus of the government on renovation of the premium trains. Swarn Project was launched for Rajdhani and Shatabdi. The interiors of the premium trains are being improved with better entertainment facilities. In addition, recently, there is a project of giving a coat of different colour to the coaches. A new colour scheme is being used for trains in the northern railways. But all this seems to be an eyewash.