The Year Gone By – IR at 168

Happy Birthday, Indian Railways!

As much as a birthday is to celebrate, it is also a day when one gets a year older. It is also a day when one looks forward to the things that can be better in the years to come.

It is also a day when one can look back at the year gone by and see what could have been better. Here is an assessment, point by point. Of the top few things that happened in the past year.

Shramik Specials – These were a bunch of trains that were thought of and operated on a very short notice. When the lockdown hit the migrant labour really hard, there was no getting away back to home for such people. Indian Railways stepped in, worked with state governments, and ran specials to ferry more than a million such people from their workplaces to their homes – even as far as 3000 kms away.

Initial hiccups like food and water on board trains, people not able to get on board for want of registration, etc, aside, IR reacted very quickly and put in place a proper registration and arranged food on most routes for these passengers. Some officials also arranged a lot of small goodies like fruits, toys to keep children engaged during the trip, medicines, and the like.

Parcel Specials – The trade also did not feel shortchanged due to lack of opportunities. IR ran a slew of parcel specials, commandeering the various types of coaches. These were run as per a scheduled time table, helping the trade reach their goods to the market pretty quickly. Most of these trains were fully loaded. Besides these specials, freight trains were able to turn around much faster, thanks to the lack of congestion on the roads. This also meant that IR’s revenue from freight operations was not badly hit, as initially feared.

T18 and T20 – This has been the biggest conundrum for IR over the last four or five years. Hailed as a breakthrough product that finally unshackled our own engineers’ propensity to innovate and make new things, the slide was not fast to come. Inter-department wrangling, whispers of irregularities from disgruntled lobbies, and many such conspiracy theories abound in the realm of IR power corridors. The T18 program has finally got a fresh life, but will it be the same again for IR on this road less travelled? Only time can tell.

Mission Raftaar – This is one area that saw, for a change, some progress. However incremental and small it may seem, this was clearly a case of three steps forward, one back. More and more sections are being upgraded, tested, and cleared for operations at 130 km per hour, and work is progressing for an upgrade to 160 kmph. It will, however, be a while before IR finds the rolling stock and the clearances to go to make entire trunk routes fit for even 130. As of now, only the Delhi to Mumbai and Delhi to Kolkata trunk routes have been substantially cleared for 130 kmph.

Finances – This is one grey area and has been so for donkey’s years. The political will is never in place to bite the bullet and increase passenger fares across the board. Whatever little has been done has been only a backdoor exercise, mere tokenism if one may say so. Much more needs to be done to earn more and invest more in upgradation – but nothing can be achieved by still having artificially higher freight charges subsidize passenger travel. Bureaucrats running IR know this, the political masters know this, but for a change,  mere knowledge is not power.

Restructuring – The move to restructure the Railway Board and the officers into a unified Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS) instead of the discipline-specific services (Traffic, Mechanical, Electrical, etc.) is slowly being implemented, beginning from the top – the Railway Board. The merger of disciplines and renaming and redefinition of roles of Members are already implemented and will be complete in phases. The eventual unification into IRMS will take some time, but it is hoped that the move tightens the organization in various aspects.

As we look forward to the next year in the IR dateline, there are also some good things happening. Electrification has gained speed – this should reduce fossil fuel cost and release funds for upgradation.

The push-pull concept also seems to be looking up, going by the recent speculation. This should enable trains, particularly those traversing more gradients and/or those with more stoppages cover distances faster. The conversion of more trains from conventional ICF technology to LHB stock can prod the zones to increase the maximum permissible speed for such stock to at least 130 kmph.

Of course, it is also evident that more zones are strengthening and making more sections fit for higher speeds and this conversion to LHB stock will only help that process.

So, we hopefully have a better appraisal next year!