Railways: Back on track

American management guru Peter Drucker had famously said, “The spirit of an organisation is created from the top”, and Union minister for railways Suresh Prabhu, with an excellent track record of his previous stint in the National Democratic Alliance, has been doing just that.

However, Mr Prabhu may like to take a leaf out of Madhavrao Scindia’s book, who as a minister of state for railways from 1986 to 1989, had set up an enviable record for ushering in some of the most innovative and long-lasting changes.

Sensing the need for fast inter-city trains, Scindia introduced the first ever Shatabdi Express between Delhi and Gwalior. Today it has grown to over 150 pair of such inter-city trains with new names being coined such as “Jan Shatabdi”, “Sampark Kranti”, “Garib Rath” and, last but not the least, “Duronto” trains by successive railway ministers, who wanted to cash in on their popularity.

The PRS (Passenger Reservation System), Scindia’s brainchild, has now grown into a network of over 9,000 terminals spread over 3,100 station issuing over one million tickets a day, about half of which are online booking via Internet and now on mobile phones.

Resistance to change, lethargy in execution of orders, inter-departmental rivalries and other such problems existed even 25 years ago. Yet, Scindia found a way to galvanise the 1.4 million strong workforce, particularly the “mandarins” of the Railway Board to deliver results as a cohesive team while identifying and effectively neutralising negative forces.

Undoubtedly, Mr Prabhu has inherited a host of problems and getting the railways back on track will require tonnes of power. Soon after Scindia bowed out, coalition politics took over. The last two decades has seen a quantum jump in the number of passenger trains from 9,000 to over 13,000. Passenger trains crowd the route of freight trains, thereby dropping the average speed of a freight train drops to 25 km/h. The freight trains are fast losing out to the road sector.

Realising that freight is the breadwinner for the railways, Mr Prabhu was pragmatic in not announcing any new trains in his last railway budget. Not saddled with compulsions and demands of coalition politics for new trains or multi-crore projects, capacity augmentation is his new “mantra”. And he has embarked with a number of initiatives that will have far-reaching effect.

A seasoned politician and a brilliant CA with an eye for figures, Mr Prabhu is also reportedly busy getting the statistics and accounts departments to upgrade their procedures in order to provide him with some meaningful data on which to base his long-term decisions. He has also given a major push to long-term projects for doubling, gauge conversion and other similar initiatives to build track capacity to remove logjam on some of the key sections.

Thinking “out of the box”, he has focused on improving passenger amenities. Booking train tickets is now a less painful task and has been well appreciated by the discerning traveller. His move to provide 60,000 collapsible garbage collection bags on various long distance trains would go a long way in helping Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.

In the 1990s, George Fernades, the then minister for railways had initiated work on the 740 km-long Konkan railways. Since its completion in 1998, it has remained a single line alignment. Rs 11,000 crore have now been earmarked for its doubling and electrification — a move that could prove to be a game-changer for the west coast.

Apart from increasing freight throughput, significantly contributing to economic growth of the west coast, speed and punctuality of the passenger trains would also improve as it will link Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Kerala. Fast suburban services with electrical multiple units (EMUs) could be introduced around some of the Tier-II cities such as Mangalore, Udupi, Goa, Karwar, etc.

Duplicating about 2,000 bridges, 91 tunnels and modifying scores of yards to accommodate double track would indeed be a formidable job. Hopefully with better techniques — such as mechanised track laying, greater availability of approach roads and taking up work on various sections simultaneously — could speed up work, reducing the project life from eight to perhaps five years.

Another of Mr Prabhu’s thrust areas is the dedicated freight corridor (DFC), which is a Rs 82,000 crore project. Initiated a decade back, it is now fast-tracked with tenders for Rs 17,000 crore of work expected to be finalised in the next six months. It would usher in an era of fast and reliable time-tabled freight service.

The Western corridor is an important part of the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor initiative, forming its transport backbone. The DFC project was launched with much fanfare in 2006, using the existing alignment for a large part. Project execution by renowned players in the field of infrastructure and mechanised track laying etc. would hopefully eliminate the possibility of cost or time overruns.

For capacity augmentation in some of the busiest rail corridors to decongest and move trains at higher average speeds, Mr Prabhu has earmarked 77 projects involving doubling and gauge conversions to be undertaken in 24 high density corridors. He now plans to invest over Rs 43,000 crore for network expansion and other amenities in 2015-16 as against Rs 26,600 crore in the previous year, an increase of a whopping 65 per cent.

The writer is former member, Railway Board