Where do you think the committee on railway restructuring – headed by economist Bibek Debroy, now Member of the NITI Aayog – held its meetings? The solemn rooms of Rail Bhawan, right? Wrong! Most of the meetings happened in the first class air-conditioned coaches of trains as committee members covered the country from New Jalpaiguri to Kalka-Shimla — to meet railway employees.

As they chugged along, the committee, comprising corporate gurus, bureaucrats, bankers-turned-stock-exchange-heads and academicians, naturally had its points of disagreements, which Debroy, refused to share with BusinessLine .

But, he shared experiences of working on the contentious report, including details about where they took wrong turns and did mid-course corrections. Excerpts:

Why is the final report not in the public domain like your interim report?

Several committees were set up by the Railways – not a single report was made public.

We put up our interim report (online) asking for comments — the Railway Board did not. In fact, when we initially put up the details of the committee, we received a deluge of emails from the public.

However, when we submitted our final report to the Railway Board on June 12, and asked them to make it public, they refused.

As it is now the property of the Railways, they decide. Left to me, I would put it up.

What were the points you watered down to make the report more acceptable?

There were some dilutions, but very few. Some things, I don’t think were a dilution – we made some mistakes.

Dilution is if you make something more palatable. . It is perfectly possible to make mistakes — that’s why there was an interim report. For instance, at first, we had put the Commissioner of Railway Safety under the railway regulator. There is another issue which I don’t think is a dilution, but others think it is. In the interim report, we suggested separating the Indian Railways into a track holding company and an operating company to ensure that the track owner does not discriminate between various operators. On this, we faced two types of criticism.

First, if you try to separate a vertically-integrated structure like the Indian Railways, all hell will break loose. So, people said, get a regulator.

Second, they said for the first five years, let the independent regulator work, and then do what you have to. The timeline was not clearly defined in the interim report.

There were some changes on the issue of having a common cadre for Railways too?

This has two components – first, you are unifying entry for the fresh appointments; second, you are unifying cadre for existing employees, which is more difficult to implement.

In the first report, we did not distinguish between the two. But in the final report, we have said that in the first five years, start with unified entry. Subsequently, take the existing one. This was done to make the report more implementable.

What about the debate on the use of railway police forces, railway medicals and schools?

On this I was convinced by the arguments of the Divisional Railway Managers (DRMs) and General Managers (GMs) – I would not call it a dilution.

They pointed out that although the interim report said don’t use RPFs but something else, it was not possible for those posted in the interiors to follow, as they did not have a choice.

They also asked why I was dictating what to use when the report talked about choice and competition. Since they have been asked to have commercial accounting and become an independent centre, such decisions should be left to them. In the final report, we left the choice to the DRMs.

The next step is to draft the Bill, which goes to Parliament, to the standing committee etc – this takes two years. My test will be on whether the Railway Board starts drafting the Bill, makes amendments to the Railways Act and Railway Board Act, and starts discussions with UPSC for unified entry. You have to see whether the report is accepted.

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