The Railways keep adding new trains without considering the feasability of such measures. Though charged with providing cheap transport, populist decisions are uncalled for
An effective leader has to be proactive, he has to make well-thought out decisions which are in the best interest of the organisation, keeping in mind the future, while also avoiding mistakes of the past. Most importantly, he must have the courage of his conviction and must stick to his decisions, come what may.
Charged with providing cheap, fast and safe rail transport to India's 1.2 billion citizens, there can be no room for populism; nor any of the political shenanigans which our ‘netas' love to indulge in. This includes announcing new trains and new lines, which would be bereft of any economic benefit to the nation except as a ‘mantra' for instant political upmanship.
As one of the first ever acts after taking over as the Chairman of the Railway Board, Ashwani lohani recorded on a file put to him for approval to start a new train: “Cannot be introduced without seriously impacting safety”. And that effectively put a stop to scores of such requests waiting in the pipeline.
lacking vision and, most importantly, spine, such an outright refusal or even a token protest, a decade ago could have put an end to such populist measures which resulted in the introduction of nearly 5,000 new trains over the last two decades.
Such a disastrous step — repeated every year come the Budget time — without commensurate capacity augmentation had seriously impacted track safety for lack of adequate time between two trains to deploy track maintenance machines.
Suresh Prabhu, the erstwhile Railway Minister's mission ‘capacity augmentation' involving adding extra line to about 70 of existing single, double and triple track sections, carrying more than 100 per cent of their capacity, would take a couple years more to be commissioned. Till then alternatives had to be found fast.
Things came to a head with a series of derailments of passengers trains in August last year, revealing the sad state of tracks, especially on branch lines whose over-aged tracks are prone to failures. These incidents, apart from claiming the scalp of Suresh Prabhu, spurred the Railways to put in motion a massive track maintenance drive, including replacement of miles of suspect rails for which a tender worth a whopping 7,17,000 tonne of steel rails has been recently issued.
This global tender worth about $464 million (Rs 30 billion) has attracted the attention of international steel majors such as ArcelorMittal and Thyssenkrupp. India's premier steel maker is also likely to throw its hat in the ring, and has invoked the Prime Minister's ‘Make In India' policy as its trump card to stake claim for the entire order. However, with limited capacity, SAIl is expected to supply only 1.3 million tonne in 2018-19, resulting in a shortfall of 1.5 million tonne. Sticking to his stand, lohani maintained, “We require rails. SAIl is not able to deliver the rails. That's it”. He went on to add: “The Indian Railways has no intention of changing the tender”.
The Railways maintain that passenger safety justifies an exemption to the ‘Make in India’ policy and the Government could allow an exception if there are shortages, or when specific grades of steel are not available. With $130 billion, five-year modernisation programme, to replace some of the 92,000 km of rails, there could be an interesting battle ahead between SAIl and Railways.
With emphasis being placed by Piyush Goyal on electrification, and phasing out diesel locomotives to save precious foreign exchange on oil imports, the Railways is planning to opt for mega tenders as large as 1,500 kms each — a major upgrade from the present average of 30-40 kms. To be issued under the EPC (Engineering, Procurement and Construction) regime, the move is expected to significantly cut down present-day cost of one to two crore rupees per kilometres. It will also attract major players such as l&T and BHEl. It will also be open to global competition.
Presently, only about 40 per cent of the 66,000 kms of rail network has been electrified and 24,400 route kms of additional electrification costing Rs 35,000 crore will take it to over 76 per cent by 2021. With the reduced deployment of diesel locomotives, the fate of Diesel locomotive Works at Varanasi hangs in balance. So does the newly built plant at Marhorwa, Bihar, by General Electric of the US, which has been contracted to supply 1,000 high horsepower diesel locomotives to the Indian Railways over next 10 years. Could exports be on the cardsIJ
(The writer is a former Member, Railway Board)