Close to Rs 100,000 crore will be spent on building a high-speed railway line between Ahmedabad and Mumbai. But a start has to be made, because there will be massive dividends from high-speed rail projects in terms of economic growth and employment
Even before the announcements were made, critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Government had rolled out the big guns to attack the plan to build a 500-odd kilometre stretch of high-speed railway line between the western metropolises of Ahmedabad and Mumbai. Some of the criticism was illogical, as the question of why this city pair had been chosen over other pairs. The other criticism was nothing more than sheer ‘whataboutery’.
The criticism of this plan has been relentless ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party actually laid out its intention to build a ‘Diamond Quadrilateral’ of high-speed railway track in its manifesto last year. Much of the criticism has been on whether the money could be better spent on developing the existing railway network in the country that is over-burdened and always on the precipice.
However, the experience of China in building a massive 20,000 kilometre, and counting, of high-speed railways, is telling. In fact, as global leaders hammered out the finer details of a global environmental agreement in Paris, one point has to be laid out. The development of high-speed rail networks has considerably reduced loads of existing railway tracks which can then be deployed to haul more freight. The fastest trains between the two largest cities in China, Beijing and Shanghai, take under five hours; they have thus also considerably reduced air travel as well.
The same example is applied across the world, across the Taiwan Straits on the island of Taiwan. A high-speed rail line carved out of the mountainous terrain has virtually ended air travel between the cities of Taipei and Kaohsiung. In Spain, the Barcelona to Madrid air-route was once one of the busiest in the world; after Spanish rail operator AVE introduced a high-speed line, air travel between the two cities has virtually ended. And this also takes hundreds of lorries off the road. Hauling people and freight by rail is far more energy-efficient than either driving in private cars or by truck.
But those are just a couple of benefits, and one single 500-kilometre line between the two western Indian cities will only be a small dent. However, it will be a vital start in building up the infrastructure required for a nationwide network of tracks and routes that can dramatically change the face of India. Yes, the line might initially impact the travel plans of a few people, but as India rises to become a middle-income nation, high-speed rail might become a standard mode of transportation for many.
While Japan, which will be significantly financing the project, will probably insist that Japanese technology is used for the line, there is little doubt that Japanese technology is among the best in the world when it comes to high-speed rail. The Tokaido Shinkansen line, which opened in 1964, is the world’s oldest high-speed railway track, and has carried over 5.3 billion people — the most of any high-speed railway line in the world since it opened — and has an unmatched safety record. It is for this reason that this railway line is considered as a historic mechanical engineering landmark. The current N700 trains used on the line are considered some of the best trainsets in the world.
This does not mean that India should only depend on Japan. Other potential high-speed lines between city pairs such as Bangalore and Chennai, and Delhi and Chandigarh, can be developed with technology sourced from other nations that have built up expertise in the sector, such as China. In fact, China absorbed information and technology from countries such as Canada, France and Germany to build its own technology systems, and has developed a multi-billion dollar high-speed rail industry of its own, with the signature Beijing-Shanghai line using made- and-developed-in-China trainsets.
Not only will the culture of high-speed railways bring in technological and manufacturing prowess into India it will also jump-start the infrastructure economy and provide jobs to thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of Indians. The Mumbai-Ahmedabad project and other subsequent ones will dovetail nicely into several other key Government schemes, particularly Make in India, Skill India and the Smart Cities initiative. In addition, once these lines are developed, they will not only lead to the obvious de-carbonisation through fewer vehicles, but also could possibly aid in the decongestion of large metropolitan areas such as Delhi and Mumbai that are currently victims of their own success. High-speed rail ought to provide fast, safe, and reliable transport into cities for people who could stay a couple of hundred kilometres away from their workplace.
There are, of course, risks. There is the obvious risk of political uncertainty given that this project will take seven years to finish. The other obvious ones are the massive cost overruns and delays that some other signature projects, such as the Mumbai Sea-link, have suffered. And there is the Indian Railways’ bureaucracy which will look upon such a project as one that should be milked to the maximum. It is vital, therefore, that on the lines of the highly-successful Delhi Metro Rail Corporation model, an independent, yet Government-owned, possibly with participation of foreign expertise, be established to build and operate the high-speed railway track.
Keep in mind, there were critics who questioned the rationale of the DMRC when it was established. Today, there is little doubt that without the Metro, Delhi would have completely and totally collapsed. And without the DMRC, Delhi’s mass transit system would have suffered the inordinate delays that Metro systems in other Indian cities have suffered.
The Modi Government has followed in the footsteps of Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee and taken a bold move. It’s a move that has the potentially to transform India.