Indian Railways - 2000

THERE IS a popular notion that railway development means the laying of new lines. This is not true. It also includes doublings, gauge conversion or other facilities that enhance the traffic-carrying capacity of existing routes.

Compared to roads, the railways are four and a half times more energy-efficient; but are at a disadvantage in regard to the following: (a) inability to provide door-to-door service; (b) public funding needed for the entire system and its operation, not merely for the infrastructure, as in the case of roads.

Railways are ideally suited for medium to long distance movement of passengers and goods, as well as for shorter distances where the quantum of traffic is too large to be moved by road.

Traditionally, the bulk of domestic traffic is shared between road and rail. Over the past 50 years, the Railways' share of passenger traffic has come down from 75 per cent to around 20 per cent and that of goods from 88 per cent to about 36 per cent. This declining trend is attributable to: (a) roads being more readily accessible to people along the route; (b) capacity limitations being more specific on the railways.

The country's transport infrastructures, both rail and road, are grossly inadequate to cope with the growing needs of traffic. This situation has arisen mainly due to the insufficiency of Plan allocations during the past 30 years. In the first three 5-year Plans, the allocation for the transport sector had averaged 23 per cent of the total plan outlay, but it dropped to 13.8 per cent during the next six Plan periods. The Railways' share for these two periods was 14 per cent and 6.1 per cent respectively. The reduction was very drastic.

Capacity saturation

A fair idea of capacity saturation of the Railways can be had from the fact that, over the 48-year period of planned development from 1951 to 99, rail-borne freight traffic (nett-km) has increased 6.44 times and passenger traffic (pass.km) 5.36 times. But the increases in route length and total running track length were only 17 per cent and 37 per cent, respectively. Even in regard to rolling stock, the wagon capacity has grown only 2.56 times, the number of passenger coaches 2.29 times and the total tractive effort of the locomotive fleet 2.24 times, during the same period. This was achieved by more efficient use of the available resources, including staff, whose strength increased only 1.73 times. By around 1990, a stage had already been reached when any further increase in output would require commensurate additional inputs.

The Railways' Corporate plan (1985-2000) had envisaged a 100 per cent growth in total traffic output. the original draft for the Eighth Plan, prepared in 1989, had proposed stepping-up of the annual growth rate of freight traffic to 5 per cent, as against an average of 3.8 per cent achieved so far. This incidentally, would have prevented further decline in the Railways' share of traffic and thus helped save considerable foreign exchange on petroleum fuel.

Unfortunately, all these plans suffered a serious setback from 1991 onwards, consequent on an overnight shift in investment policy and priorities, from need-based development aimed at capacity augmentation on economic considerations to certain grandiose and populist schemes aimed at promoting the ``political'' interests of those in power for the time being. These included the over-ambitious scheme of wholesale gauge conversion (or the so-called ``Project Unigauge''), in stark contrast to the earlier policy of selective and need-based conversions. Overriding priority for this scheme from 1992 onwards has resulted in a drastic slowing-down of real capacity augmentation, both infrastructure and rolling stock. Side by side, several other unproductive schemes, like unremunerative new lines, redundant creation of some new railway zones (a most retrograde step in these days of I.T. revolution) etc., have been launched by the successive governments, in utter disregard of the corporate mission of the Railways.

Adverse fallout

The aforesaid aberrations in IR's investment policies during the past nine years have led to the following adverse fallout:

(a) The average annual growth rate of freight output, which was slated to be stepped up from 3.8 to 5 per cent has dropped to a never-before low of 2.2 per cent. The excess diversion of freight from rail to road on this account during the 8-year period 1991- 99 is estimated to have resulted in excess consumption of petroleum (HSD) to the tune of 3 million tonnes besides adding to the congestion on roads.

(b) The average annual growth of passenger traffic has dropped from 4.6 to 3.2 per cent. This again has resulted in extra spillover to the roads.

(c) Reduced production of passenger coaches, coupled with the diversion of a sizable number of coaches and locomotives to replace MG trains on newly gauge-converted sections, has worsened the conditions of travel for the common man.

(d) Track renewals have gone into heavy arrears, resulting in increased incidence of rail failures.

(e) Consequent on slowing-down of traffic growth, IR has had to hike the fares and freight rates very substantially to balance the yearly budgets.

(f) In the last two years, the Railway Ministers have been resorting to over-optimistic projections of revenue earnings, which ultimately results in drastic cuts in plan expenditure, because of the shortfall in earnings.

(g) In the latest Budget (2000-2001), the Railways have actually gone into the red with a default of Rs. 1,500 cr. in dividend payment to the general exchequer. This is indicative of the dire financial straits in which IR has been landed.

IR today has the dubious distinction of being the only major railway system in the world where major decisions on investment policy and organisaiton are taken by politicians according to their whims and fancies. This has, perhaps, been helped by the fact that railway projects had always been kept out of the purview of the Public Investments Board, because of the Railway Ministry being professionally managed, with its own Finance headed by the Financial Commissioner who is accountable to the Finance Minister as well.

Damage control measures

The future of railway development appears to be bleak as things stand, unless some damage control measures are taken immediately to arrest and, if possible, reverse the downhill trends. These will necessarily have to include the following:

(a) A review of the ongoing gauge conversion works to see how best they can be tapered down, so as to reduce the yearly spending thereon to affordable limits.

(b) Unremunerative new lines projects should be frozen.

(c) The seven new railway zones should be shelved, except the NW Zone at Jaipur which is justifiable on kilometreage basis.

(d) Production of coaches and locomotives to be stepped up to utilise the available capacity in full.

(e) There should be no further introduction of fully air- conditioned trains. For every air-conditioned coach saved, two non-a/c coaches can be produced with the same money, which will benefit the common man.

(f) More powerful engines should be used to haul goods trains so that the average speed of through goods trains may equal that of mail/exp. trains. This will enable better utilisation of the wagon fleet and locos and reduce the turn-round time.

(g) There should be a major thrust for `containerisation' of domestic freight, with terminals spread all over the country, so as to derive the dual benefits of long hauls by rail and door-to- door service to the customers at both ends through short hauls by road. This will help win back some of the traffic at present moving by road.

(h) No new railway project should be sanctioned (except strategic ones) unless found justified economically.

M. N. PRASAD

Former Chairman, Railway Board

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Elections in the U.S. and India
Next     : Experiments with poverty in AP and Rajasthan