Why the Indian Railways are a mess
A series of train accidents have caused hundreds of deaths recently.
The recent spate of fatal accidents on the railway network have once again centre-staged the urgent need to modernise its infrastructure - from tracks and signals to passenger amenities such as foot over-bridges.
This again raises questions on the Indian railways' seeming inability to implement a focused, goal-oriented and time-bound action plan.
The Indian Railways is the world's third largest rail network. Its three gauges span over 100,000 track kilometres, its 21,000 trains are made of more than 7,500 locomotives, nearly 38,000 coaches and over 220,000 freight wagons. Together, they move 22 million passengers daily and nearly 1.1 billion tonnes of cargo annually. The Indian railways is operated by a work-force of over 1.3 million personnel.
According to the Indian Railways: Three Year Performance Report, the railways had identified its key challenges in 2014. Years of under-investment had resulted in an overstretched infrastructure, with 60% routes being more than 100% utilised and inadequate carrying capacity leading to huge unmet passenger demand and lower share of freight.
It also identified lack of low passenger fares, customer focus and rigid organisational structure among other challenges. To address these, it planned a medium-term investment of Rs 8,560 billion with 15% earmarked for safety and another 13% for passenger amenities, station development and logistic parks.
During this period, the government also did away with the political gravy train that was the engine of the separate rail budget.
However, three years later, there is very little to show by way of safety. While some railways stations, such as Varanasi, now look better with clean floors and improved lighting, it is clear that the stations and services that cater to the maximum number of passengers have not yet benefited. The rail networks of Mumbai and Delhi, which carry nearly half of the 22 million daily passengers, continue neglected.
That the Mumbai suburban railways is the neglected child of Indian Railways is clear from the fact that it carries 7.5 million passengers daily, a third of the total passengers nation-wide, in just over 2,300 daily services - a tenth of total services nation-wide.
The neglect of passengers and freight customers lies in politics. It may not be wrong to say that Indian railways is the country's longest running political scam. The post of the railway minister has been much coveted, only so that politicians can provide rail services, jobs or health benefits to their constituents.
Others have used it as a source of campaign funding for themselves or their parties. News reports from the past two decades have been full of the political chicanery around the railways.
That politics blights Indian railways is clear from the fact that there have been 43 railway ministers in the 70 years since Independence. Piyush Goyal, the current incumbent, is the third from the present government, and 10th since 2009. Lalu Yadav is the only railway minister to have completed a five-year term, from 2004 to 2009.
This situation is further compounded by the fact that there have been 42 chairpersons of the railway board since Independence. These chairpersons are usually political appointees or seniors, and merit is often not the chief criterion.
The centralised management of Indian railways by short-tenured politicians and political appointees is at the heart of its mismanagement. The customer base and the geography that Indian railways serves is too big to be managed centrally.
It is time that the railways is depoliticised and unbundled, like in other modern democracies. As a first, the Mumbai Suburban Railways can be constituted as an independent corporation like the Delhi Metro or the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation, which have a clear focused mandate.
Improving upon the infrastructure it currently operates on - tracks, stations and other real estate, this new corporation can engender a work culture that emphasises customers and safety, and can use its financial heft to raise investments rather than depend on crumbs available from the annual budget, which is nothing but political patronage.
Examples of depoliticised unbundled railway systems abound globally, especially in UK and US. Network Rail of UK, which manages tracks and the country's 18 largest stations, has a CEO who has no previous railway experience. It is currently implementing a Digital Railway investment program which will "see more trains running faster, more reliably and at lower cost on its infrastructure".
Towards this end, it is spending £130 million every week for undertaking activities for "a few hours at night so that the railway can keep serving 4.5m passengers, safely, every day". In contrast, Indian railways' medium-term investment plan proposes to spend £378 million every week not just on tracks and stations' renewal, but also on rolling stock, logistics parks, research, network expansion, among others.
Amtrak, the national passenger rail service provider of the US, has the federal transport secretary as a board member, not the chair, which is held by a professional manager. Its website places Amtrak Customer Advisory Committee above its board. This committee consists of 20-30 volunteers from across the United States, who represent Amtrak's ridership and service areas, thereby providing the "voice of the customer".
These are lessons for Indian Railways, which can only emphasise safety and customers if it has less political interference, and a professional, decentralised organisation and management.