The Hindu Business Line : A rough journey down the line

THE third Rail Budget of the UPA Government is all set to be unveiled on Friday and the Railway Minister, Mr Lalu Prasad, will once again show his legerdemain of keeping the rail users happy by not — resorting to any hike either in the passenger or freight rates.

Given the ground realities of five States going to the polls in a couple of months, the Railway Minister, who was deterred from imposing any fare hike in the last Budget because of the Bihar elections, will continue to resort to his rustic wit by refraining from any immediate impost.

If the past experience is any indication, both in November 2004 and in July and December 2005, the freight rates of select commodities and container charges were revised upwards, even as the last two rail budgets did not propose any hike in passenger fares or freight except in the last Budget when freight rates on iron ore for export did go up.

Now it has become an accepted wisdom among the industry users of the Railways to look for changes in the course of the fiscal year than in the Budget, as the latter has become a byword to avoid hard decisions and instead present only a please-all package through cosmetic changes and grand gestures.

A conspectus of the chequered career of the railways shows that from a modest start of 34 km from Boribunder to Thane in 1853 in the pre-colonial period, the Railways (IR) had expanded its network at a laggard pace of 0.33 per annum, which is not in keeping with an expanding economy of India's size and diversity.

The Railway network has expanded at snail's pace of only 9,544 km from 1950-51 to 2002-03. No doubt, the IR is operating through the length and breadth of the country with 63,221 route km, comprising 46,807 km broad gauge, 13,290 km of meter gauge and 312 km of narrow gauge.

It has a fleet of 2,28,170 wagons (units), 40,781 coaches, 7,817 locomotives running daily 13,684 trains including 8,622 passenger trains carrying 1.6 million tonnes of freight traffic and about 14 million passengers covering 7,031 stations.

Such a gargantuan operation by a monolithic organisation is not seen anywhere else in the world except China where the assets and activities of China Railways (CR) are indeed mammoth.

Compared to impressive strides made by CR, what supervened in India down these years is not consolidation and expansion of the existing lines or additional ones or rolling stocks but dissipation of precious resources on political considerations for fancy or unviable projects where the initial zeal flagged off before long, leaving outlays spent on them spawning scant outcome.

This is borne out by the fact that the ongoing and pending project shelf of Railways is worth a whopping Rs 47,354 crore as on April 1, 2005.

Even as the Railways assets in the form of rolling stocks such as coaches, wagons and containers appear antique, the obsessive fascination for pork by political leaders who lord over the Ministry of Railways in successive years meant the technological upgradation of assets indispensable to improve efficiency, throughput and increasing average speed of trains moves at a tardy pace.

This is despite the need to modernise the coaches so that they are more cosy, accident and fireproof and upgrade the wagon with capacity for more axle on load and containers with copious capacities to carry high volume freight.

As it is, the Railways expect to achieve 675 million tonnes in freight traffic this fiscal, and with the economy showing signs of accelerated growth the movement of goods will also be in a higher gear, warranting deployment of adequate rolling stocks.

But lack of wagons and inordinate turnaround time of wagons puts paid to any further spurt in freight traffic unless the authorities seized the initiative to set off measures in this direction.

The Railways have projected to acquire 9,160 coaches and 1,745 EMUs during the Tenth Plan (2002-07).

But in the first three years, the Railways could acquire only 5,957 coaches and 397 EMUs.

With the last year of the Tenth Plan now coming to an end, the record on coaches and EMUs acquisition leaves a lot to be desired.

A House Panel report on railway production unit, tabled in Parliament in this session, reveals that the Railways are presently using 562 overaged EMUs after putting extra inputs to cope with the shortfall!

Hence, it said that these overaged EMU coaches still being run should be replaced on a priority so that safety of passengers travelling in EMU trains is ensured!

Taking a dig at the Rail Minister's steadfast penchant for announcing new trains to win over political constituencies when as many as 54 new trains were announced in the last Rail Budget over and above extension of 28 trains and increasing the frequencies of 10 trains, the House Panel sounds a sensible note of caution.

Hence, its plea for all pre-requisites such as the infrastructure capability to bear stress, capacity enhancement through acquisition of rolling stock commensurate with the growth of passenger traffic, the provision of adequate time for maintenance of assets/rolling stock to be well in place before announcing the new trains.

It is time the Minister took the cue from this bipartisan Parliamentary Committee report censure on the innate risks in overstretching the system without duly providing for its constant upkeep and renewal.

No doubt, the decision by the Union Cabinet on February 21 for the creation of a Rs 22,500 crore railway freight corridor special purpose vehicle (SPV) and making it independent of the Railways would no doubt make industry comfortable concerning the movement of freight between Western and Eastern regions on a dedicated corridor and on high speed trains.

Even with Railways holding controlling stake in the SPV, the funding mechanism and other stakeholders in the proposed corridors to be announced in the Rail Budget or subsequently would help clear the air.

In any case, the time has come for the IR to be business-like in its running so that areas in which it does not possess competence or expertise is carved out or outsourced for ensuring efficiency in services and satisfaction to end-users over the long haul.

Issues such as safety, passenger amenities, punctuality in trains should be the preserve of the IR while production units, rolling stock maintenance and acquisition, privatisation of non-core activities could be subject to commercial judgement and optimal utilisation.

One can only wish that the rustic wisdom of the Minister will help him in seeing the bumpy road ahead for the railways if it refuses to be market-savvy and plods on as usual performing several chores and ending up doing none better.

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