Railway Board to be Restructured: Railway Minister

Railway Board to be Restructured: Railway Minister

New Delhi: The Modi government’s first rail budget announced that the railway board would be restructured, aiming to infuse efficiency in the state-run transporter’s top decision-making body.

“At the moment, the railway board, due to overlapping roles of policy formulation and implementation, has become unwieldy. Therefore, I propose to separate these two functions,” railway minister Sadananda Gowda said.

Gowda’s first budget betrays the influence of the mechanical department — one of the biggest and most important departments in the railways which controls most funding — as it succeeded in scuttling plans for running more efficient and environment-friendly train operations.

The minister has to focus on reorganizing the state-run transporter in order to curb inter-departmental rivalry which is seeped in the culture of protecting vested interests. Many expert committees – such as Prakash Tandon Committee (early 1990s), Rakesh Mohan Committee (2001), Anil Kakodkar Committee (2011) — have suggested restructuring of the transporter but successive governments have failed to do so due to stiff resistance from the railway bureaucracy.

The powerful lobby scuttled projects related to electrification, running modern train-sets which are environment-friendly and more efficient than traditional trains and upgrading signaling and communication system as these projects failed to attract much funding.

Officials within railways and several committees have noted that the turf war between mechanical, engineering and electrical departments is affecting railways’ modernization agenda.

“The present organizational set-up on departmental lines is very conservative and lacks dynamism needed in a transport organization of the stature of Indian Railways. Such a set-up also gives rise to inter-departmental rivalry losing sight of the overall organizational goals including safety,” noted the Anil Kakodkar panel which had E Sridharan as its member.

The mechanical department, which is one of the oldest, generally prevails over other departments as it has more men in the railway board and as heads of many zonal and divisional units.

“The fight is of domination which is backed by vested interests such as diesel lobby developed over the years,” said an official.

Even the recent trial run on the Delhi-Agra sector in 90 minutes was questioned as the reduction in travel time due to 160 kmph speed was a mere three minutes. It was claimed that newer train-sets could travel faster than such locomotive-driven trains and travel time could be substantially cut down as they accelerate faster, increasing average speed of the train.

The sanctioning of electrification projects has been slowed which was reflected in the budget which mentioned only two such lines, ignoring the report of Raken Mohan panel on national transport policy. “Railway electrification should be taken up on a priority basis,” it had said.

The panel argued that electrification should be viewed as a means of making rail transport independent of imported fossil energy, while also providing a choice in sourcing energy. It said electric traction allows regeneration of power while braking, coasting and feeding the network, thereby reducing overall consumption of energy and carbon emissions which is not possible with diesel traction.

India is significantly behind other countries in locomotive productivity, indicating purchase of diesel locos which are not in optimal use.

Only 38% of the rail network is currently electrified. The answer to the low level of electrification lies in the presence of a strong diesel lobby in railways.

As of now, most procurement of rolling stock — coaches, wagons, locomotives — and their maintenance, entailing substantial funds, fall under the jurisdiction of the mechanical department. The department also control production units — diesel and electric loco units, coach and wagon manufacturing.

Gowda didn’t throw too many hints when he mentioned restructuring the railway board, but top officials say they were already working on a revamp plan that would separate its policy-making and operations arms.

Source:RailNews