Turn Indian Railways into a holding company

Nantoo Banerjee

The government may disagree, train journey in India is becoming increasingly unsafe and unreliable in terms of keeping its time schedule and service quality. Since the BJP-led NDA government came to power in May 2014, Indian Railways recorded the largest number of major train accidents — 27 in 31 months — making it almost a monthly feature. Since Last November, three major accidents in three months killed some 200 passengers and injured over 350 train travellers. Actually, train journey during last year proved to be more dangerous for passengers than that in 2015. The worst came less than three months ago. The Indore-Rajendra Nagar (Patna) Express derailment, killing some 150 passengers and seriously injuring over 270, was the biggest railway accident in the world, last year, with 14 of its coaches derailed about 60 kilometres from Kanpur, on November 20, last year. However, within weeks, 15 coaches of the Ajmer-Sealdah Express derailed while crossing a bridge. The new year too seemed to portend evil for train journey as on January 21, Hirakud Express derailed near Vizianagaram, killing over 40 passengers, injuring some 70 and making the train journey a nightmare for over 600 other people on board.

Apart from holding routine enquiries into rail accidents, the Railways does little to ensure passenger safety. Rail accidents seem to be taking place more frequently and routinely, with impunity. No one except the unfortunate victims and their families truly appears to be in agony. Alongside accidents, the Railways seem to have gone totally berserk about the train time tables, including even those most so-called prestigious trains where upper class rail fares compare with air fares for similar distances. January, 2017 witnessed the worst records of train schedules. Most long distance trains, including Rajdhani Express and Duronto, ran 10 to 20 hours late from their normal schedule. To give a specific example, on January 7-8, Patna Rajdhani ran 21 hours behind schedule, Sampurna Kranti Express 22 hours behind schedule, Bhubaneswar Rajdhani 19 hours behind schedule, Sealdah Rajdhani 12 hours behind schedule. The story is common almost through the entire month for all major trains, connecting India's metro cities. The Railways routinely blamed them on ‘fog' conditions despite the fact that the maximum speed limit for even Rajdhani Express, in normal times, is only 130 km per hour though the average speed works out less than 85 km per hour. Fog conditions alone on trunk routes hardly slow them down. Incidentally, winter fog conditions on India's four major metropolitan city trunk routes are hardly comparable with that in the United Kingdom or in Europe where technically geared fast trains run at a much higher speed through dense fog and rains. The Railways may differ; poor traffic management is primarily responsible for the railway time schedule often going haywire.

Unfortunately, few railway ministers, except probably the Late Lal Bahadur Shastri, paid much attention to rail safety and time tables. Shastri had even resigned from the ministry taking the blame of a train accident on himself. Such instances are rare for modern day ministers. Often guided by bureaucrats, ministers are happier to talk about revenue prospects of their departments than about serving people, for whose benefit these departments are created. While services provided to train passengers are deteriorating by the day, the railway management is said to be toying with such absurd ideas as renting out railway platforms and waiting rooms for parties in odd hours or branding trains like Coca-Cola Rajdhani, Pepsi Duronto, or Lux G T Express, to mop up extra revenue for the Railways. Few in the railway management care for passenger comfort while they are more comfortable about talking on the railways' digitisation programme, probably meant to please the Prime Minister. Even in New Delhi railway station platforms, there are not enough seating arrangements for passengers. Waiting rooms are overcrowded and their attached toilets often stink. The facilities available for passengers are in bad shape for want of supervision despite the creation of new posts like ‘Station Directors'. The public announcement system rarely provides correct information about the arrival and departure of a train, when it runs far behind its schedule.

The massive monopolistic nature of operation of Indian Railways may be largely responsible for the falling safety records, sloppy technological revamps, deteriorating time schedule and poor service standards. The government department, which is ordained to interact with the public daily, almost every minute or every hour, has become too big and unwieldy to be managed by a bunch of railway board members and ministers. The ministers often work as departmental top dogs under the famous Peter's Principle who see things not through their eyes but through their ears.

In fact, it could be a major political blunder on the part of the government if the operation of the country's largest single public transport service such as the railways is still run by a department. Post the 2017-18 budget, the government will do well to convert railway operation into a listed public sector enterprise. It can operate as a holding company such as Coal India Limited with regional rail services operating as subsidiaries. Interestingly, the Ministry of Railways has over a dozen departmental PSEs, operating in India as also abroad by some, with impeccable track records. There is no reason why the world's largest railway service should be run under an archaic government department. Instead, with all probability, the regional railway companies are expected to offer much better services by competing with themselves and managing their resources at peak levels to reflect on their bottom lines. They will cut operational costs, rationalise employment, improve productivity and generate surplus for modernisation. Finally, this will help both the government and the railway service users.