Railways, Tata-led panel clash on roadmap

The move to transform the Indian Railways has apparently hit a roadblock. There seems to be a clash of views between the ministry of Railways and the Ratan Tata-headed Kayakalp Council, set up to suggest a roadmap for the enterprise.

There has not been a single meeting of the council since November last year. The council was set up in 2015.

While the Tata-headed council wants the ministry to identify a particular sector, such as safety, and improve upon it, the ministry is against the idea of focusing on only one particular rail sector or zone.

“There has been no meeting of the Kayakalp council for almost eight months now. In all, the council has met three times in the last 17 months. The council in those three meetings tried to familiarise itself with the functioning of the Railways and various other issues.

However, there seems to be no forward movement on the mandate given to the council in the Rail Budget,” said a member of the Kayakalp council, nor has there has been any report from it yet on any area.

Incidentally, the Kayakalp council came into being when the Narendra Modi government was new in office and gave signals of big reforms.

However, the strong muscle of the railway unions appears to have slowed down the resolve of the Modi government to go for big reform in the Railways. “The approach of the Railways appears to be to strike a balance between its social obligation and incremental reforms being pursued by the Union minister of railways Suresh Prabhu. This has apparantly squeezed the mandate of the Kayakalp council,” sources said.

Mr Tata has been reportedly keen for the Railways to accord top priority to safety and wanted the authorities to study the safety standards of the Jamnagar unit of Reliance Petroleum and Tata Steel at Jamshedpur. But, sources said, that the Railway Board did not follow up on the suggestion. The Kayakalp Council is said to have last been working on a report on safety, which it wanted to submit, but there has been no progress on that front either.

“Kayakalp members expressed surprise when told that the Railways cross-subsidize passenger fares to the tune of Rs 36,000 crore each year. But afterwards the idea dawned among the members that the Railways cannot be seen to be giving up their social obligation and embrace reforms in a big way to attract private investment,” sources added.

Mr Tata had attended all the three meetings at Rail Bhavan, Delhi, and is said to be against the idea of holding deliberations in Mumbai.