The Hindu Business Line : Chinese Railways: Growth on the fast track

will be called Shanghai, can the Indian Railways (IR) emulate the Chinese Railways (CR) record of last few years? Not a ghost of a chance, unless the political leadership is determined that Indian Railways will no longer be treated as a prize milch cow, available to the highest political bidder!

Forget the comparisons with the US railroads, which have a combined network of over 2,30,000 km, the Chinese Railways (which had just over 58,000 route-km compared to 62,000 route-km in India in the early 1990s) have within a decade added about 24,000 km of new track reaching 72,000 km (a growth of 24 per cent compared to India's 1 per cent).

Freight increment for the period was 394 billion tonne-km, more than the 336 billion tonne-km carried by the lumbering elephant for the entire year 2002.

There are no signs of this construction activity slowing, with CR's plans to reach 1,00,000 km by 2020. "All inputs are at international levels, mostly in the joint sector," stated the Chinese Railways Minister Liu Zhijun, a few years ago.

Of course the CR is no match to the IR when it comes to density of track. With three times the size of India , for each million sq. km it has only 7,489 route-km compared to the 19,133 route-km that we have. The IR also scores in carrying short-distance commuters, who make up 60 per cent passenger traffic.

The CR track density (population-wise) is 55.3 km per million as compared to 63.1 km in India. While the IR has a fairly well-distributed network , with slightly lower density in the North-East, the CR is concentrated in the West. Understandably recent thrust areas have been towards the East, where construction of a 1,118-km line from Gormo in Qinghai province to Lhasa began in 2001 and is expected to be operational in 2007.

Admittedly for political consolidation, it may spur economic growth in the TAR (Tibet Autonomous Region), like our Jammu-Srinagar-Baramulla line.

A new 1,307 km high-speed dedicated passenger line, Jinghu, connecting Beijing to Shanghai opened in 2001. Built for speeds of 300 kmph, it has trains now running at 160 kmph, with plans to bring it to the top speed. As it links the nation's political and business capitals, economic growth is expected to surge.

Of the 72,000-km network, the governmental pie is just over 60,000 km, the rest being controlled by joint ventures and local governments, mostly running commuter services. This is nowhere near the volumes carried by the combined network of Western and Central Railways in Mumbai, where most of the expansion, almost 8,000 km of new track, has been generated through joint ventures.

How did China manage such a jump in its transport capability to meet the rising economic and industrial needs? The answer could lie in the rulers' perception that the railways was too important a piece infrastructure to be ignored and had for the last decade kept retired bureaucrats with proven track record at the helm of the Railways.

Somewhat like Mr E. Sreedharan, a tough, no nonsense bureaucrat who having retired at the peak of his career went on to build the 720-km Konkan Railways through one of the most difficult terrain and is now creating a masterpiece transport engineering — the Delhi Metro.

With its freight-dominated railway, China carried 2,043 million tonnes (MT) in 2001-02, almost four times India's 522 MT. This wasmade possible by accepting non-bulk traffic, and the willingness to carry less than full train loads, besides the higher level of double track (almost 40 per cent against the IR's 25 per cent).

One of the key figures for CR's rapid pace of growth has been Fu Zhihuan, who graduated from the Moscow Railway Institute and worked as a technician at the Zhuzhou Electrical Engineering Research Institute, before becoming Chief Engineer and Director of the prestigious Science and Technology Bureau under the Ministry of Railways.

His stint as Director and Vice Party Committee Secretary of the Harbin Railway Bureau in Heilongjiang Province shot him into prominence and he was appointed Vice-Minister of Railways before assuming charge as Minister of Railways in March 1998. The rest, as they say, is history.

(The author is former Member (Mechanical), Railway Board. Feedback may be sent to acharya@ernet.in)

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