The Hindu Business Line : Mr Lalu Prasad and his horses

"IF YOU do not milk the cow fully, it falls sick," announced sagely Mr Lalu Prasad, who as the Minister for Railways is responsible for the efficient and safe working of this behemoth, which employs 1.7 million people.

"The wagon is the bread earning horse of the Railways, load it adequately. Make it run and don't stable it," he further added. As one who was Chief Minister of Bihar for two decades, by himself and in proxy, he knew what he was talking about. He had understood the basics of rail transport, or for that matter any business — optimum use of the available assets.

However, Mr Lalu Prasad is not the first to have recognised the importance of this humble piece of equipment, which is always in great demand and very often in short supply.

In the mid-1970s, soon after taking over the chair in Rail Bhavan, T. A. Pai, the suave businessman from Manipal, gave the Railway Board mandarins a very short and simple directive, "Gentlemen, I am a banker and I do not like having non-performing assets on my books. Wagons are my most valuable assets but we have hundreds of them unloadable and hence non-performing. Do what ever you need to do, but get them fit for loading in the shortest possible time."

It was still the era of the ubiquitous four-wheeler wagons and most of them having been over-used become unloadable. Soon scores of repair depots all over the railways were galvanised into action and those wagons were made loadable, and in the process met a huge backlog of indents, making Pai a very happy man.

Mr Lalu Prasad has plenty of horses of various types in his stable. About 2.5 lakh at last count, of which the BOXN is the main beast of burden carrying chiefly coal, iron ore, limestone, salt etc.

It is closely followed by the BCN, which is the covered version carrying commodities likely to get damaged or pilfered in transit — bagged consignments of fertiliser, cement, foodgrains, etc. Costing an average of about Rs 15 lakh a piece, they represent a cool Rs 37,500 crore in assets. Of course, they have to be moved from place to place, hauled by a locomotive.

Interestingly, this horse of steel is of extremely robust design and is a rugged piece of equipment. Extensive trials on the South Eastern, Central and Southern Railways over the last decade with about 600 rakes working in close circuit have established the capability of BOXN wagons to run over 6000 km before needing a break.

Fitted with high performance roller bearing, slack adjustors, air brakes, etc., the periodic stoppage is only for replacing the brake blocks, if required, and checking the brake power, a basic safety requirement. Wagons fitted with composite brake blocks can easily make these rakes run beyond 10,000 km without a break, and that means a considerable saving in down time.

However, these rakes need a single master and cannot provide optimum performance if there is no accountability for their health. Undoubtedly, Mr Lalu should be able to appreciate this, and in his usual style find a way to get the Railway Board mandarins to take a hard look at what has been achieved so far in the area of closed circuit working of rakes, and get his horses to run not the measly 200 km, but 1000 km a day.

Of course, the need for maintaining integrity of the rake and working in closed circuit to ensure a fixed maintenance home base is paramount. Such base depots will not only have detailed record of the inputs organised during each trip, but also assume total accountability for the health of each rake. Proof of the pudding is in the eating and South Eastern Railway has amply demonstrated this with a sharp fall in the average number of out-of-course repairs, which tend to curb train speeds.

Furthermore, if Mr Lalu Prasad's wagons have to change from the present role of mules to race horses they need a clear path to run on, uncluttered with the scores of Rajdhanis, Shatabdis and other passenger trains, which have been introduced by the hundreds in the last decade and a half. In fact, this crowding of tracks, leading to a steep drop in the average speeds of goods trains is what led to the proposal of freight corridors.

Designed to run at a maximum speed of 80 km per hour, freight trains can easily average 50 kmph, allowing for starting and stopping at wayside stations, going through the loops, etc. With increased stress on mechanised loading and unloading, the possibility of attaining an average of 20 hours run each day is not remote. Getting a wagon usage of 1000 km per hour a day is within the Indian Railway's reach, a usage which railroads in the US, China, Australia achieve as a matter of routine.

What Mr Lalu Prasad has are horses with stamina, fit to run the Derby. It is unfortunate that they are still being used as mules, while we plan for a quantum leap in freight capability with the new freight corridors.

Time is perhaps now ripe for replacing the age-old systems of intensive examination of freight trains every 1000 km — a hangover of the four-wheeler era — with a more pragmatic approach of preventive maintenance schedules.

A paradigm shift is urgently needed; accountability is the key. The new maintenance system will need the wagons, newly manufactured or after a periodic overhaul (POH) being inducted into service as complete rakes. They would remain as such till due for a new cycle of a POH, restricted overhaul (ROH), etc., at nominated base and ROH depots or Railway Workshops.

Undoubtedly, it should also result in a steep fall in derailments, which account for 67 per cent of train accidents — an aspect Mr Lalu Prasad can ill afford to ignore.

It is one thing to milk the cow fully so that it does not fall sick, but milking it dry, while it is starved is an entirely different matter.

Perhaps Mr Lalu Prasad, while avoiding the path of financial profligacy, which may starve the cow to death, will ensure that his horses can deliver, what they were designed to do in the first place — be a fast, safe, and reliable rail transport for the nation's burgeoning freight traffic, and at prices which are lowest in the world.

(The author is a former Member — Mechanical — of the Railway Board. Feedback may be sent to acharya@bol.net.in)