The finances of the Railways have gone off track due to a massive drop of over 33 per cent in both passenger traffic revenue and passenger turnout in reserved trains so far in this financial year. The drop, the biggest in the last 15 years, comes despite the Suresh Prabhu-led Ministry initiating “innovative” steps like dynamic fare structure in the last few months.
While passenger traffic revenue declined by 35 per cent, the passenger turnout dropped by 33.67 per cent. Almost all the zones have witnessed near uniform drop in revenue due to lower passenger turnout, according to a top Railway Board official.
The only consolation is that the non-reserved section revenue has shown an increase of 8 per cent due to higher passenger turnout. This is in contrast to the 1 per cent decrease that has normally been the trend during the last one decade.
Interestingly, while the suburban section has witnessed a revenue increase of 2.88 per cent, it has seen a drop of 2.83 per cent in the turnout.
While the drop in revenue is presumably attributed to measures such as flexi-fare and upward revision of fare structure, Railway officials are yet to decipher the exact reason for the huge drop in passenger traffic in reserved trains.
While “officially” the Ministry of Railways have claimed in successive Railway Budgets over the years that there has been no increase in passenger fare, but the fare structure over the decade has doubled in all classes. “The drop has been reported on almost the same scale and percentage over all the 16 zones. If there would have been a drought or flood or any catastrophe-like situation in some States, then the particular zone would have been impacted, but statistics show that all the zones have shown a drop between 27 per cent and 45 per cent. The average comes to 35 per cent,” explained the official.
As per official figures, passenger bookings dipped to 683.17 million as against the target of 686.61 million in the last quarter. In the passenger segment, the revenue is way behind the target as Railways earned Rs3,815.43 crore as against the target of Rs4,253.71 crore, a decrease of 10.30 per cent for this quarter.
In the last fiscal too, the situation was not good as the Railways saw a decline of 11 per cent, prompting the Railway Board Chairman AK Mittal to write to all zonal railways to ascertain the reasons for it.
The fares for sleeper and ordinary second classes have almost doubled and with air travel steadily becoming cheaper, dynamic fare introduction in premium trains has not gone down well with travellers.
The Railways had introduced the flexi-fare system in premier services, including Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duronto trains, to increase revenue from passengers. The exercise initially showed a good response but then the bookings dipped, causing serious concerns to the architects of the rail flexi-fare.
In order to increase revenue model in the passenger segment, the national transporter has also done away with concessions for children with some riders and also curtailed concessions provided to NRI senior citizens. The twin measures have failed to bring in any major increase in revenue.
A senior Railway official attributed the losses due to the ongoing price war triggered by airline operators who are offering much cheaper tickets than Railways on several routes. The Railways has also announced many ambitious projects, including massive expansion and modernisation of rail networks like Bullet trains, semi and high-speed trains and new variety of trains like Humsafar, Tejas, Gatiman, Deendayalu with higher tariffs. This could further deter passengers travel by rail.