Infra Vaani | Indian Railways Progress Report and Unfinished Agenda

Before the announcement of the schedule of the general elections by the Election Commission, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the first 75 days of the year 2024, dedicated to the nation completed infrastructure projects worth more than Rs 11 lakh crore across sectors, including more than one lakh crore projects related to Indian Railways. He also said that the last ten years gone by are trailers and the next ten years will be transformative for Indian Railways.

As Prime Minister Modi seeks an unprecedented third term in office, the time is ripe to make a threadbare impartial analysis of the performance of his government in the last ten years. In Part 1 of this multi-part series, I begin with the hits and misses of 10 years of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the arena of the Indian Railways. And I begin with a humble submission – when it comes to Indian Railways, the performance, though laudable, leaves many boxes unticked.

Hits, misses and the unfinished agenda

• Vande Bharat – Indubitably, the emergence and mainstreaming of the fully indigenous semi-high-speed Vande Bharat trains has been the singular achievement of the Modi government in the past ten years. Though the first two pairs of the Vande Bharat trains were launched in the last year of the first tenure of the NDA government, currently 51 pairs of Vande Bharat trains are operational (seventeen 16-car services and thirty-four 8-car services) and many more including its long-distance variant are in pipeline.

The above is a laudable achievement notwithstanding the fact that the actual performance falls short of what was promised – 75 operational Vande Bharat trains in the 75^th year of the independence. However, there is an unfinished agenda. So far, Vande Bharat trains, despite having a designed speed of more than 160 kmph, are running at the suboptimal speed of 100 kmph or less, due to operational limitations related to line capacity, signalling and track infrastructure deficiency. This anomaly needs to be fixed at the war footing.

• Namo Bharat – With the arrival of the semi-high speed Namo Bharat trains (designed speed 180 kmph, operational speed 160 kmph) as a part of the Delhi-Merrut RRTS project planned in the first term of the Modi government and executed at record speed in the second term, Bharat enters the third rail-based mobility revolution in the country. First was the arrival of railways in India in 1853 which led to fast connectivity and the second was the partial opening of phase I of the Delhi Metro in 2002 which led to the transformation of urban mobility in 22 Indian cities.

The first project of 82 km Namo Bharat between Delhi and Merrut (34 km 8 stations already operational) will transform the regional rail connectivity in the same way metro rails are today transforming intra-city mobility. When the entire 82 km is completed by June 2025, it will alter the very pattern of urbanisation of India and once the planned Namo Bharat connectivity projects connecting Delhi with regional cities in UP, Haryana and Rajasthan are completed, it will have a cascading effect of having more such regional connectivity projects connecting other Indian metropolises with nearby cities in the hub and spoke model.

• Amrit Bharat Station Scheme – The story of the modernisation/redevelopment of railway stations began in 2006 with the plan of big-ticket redevelopment of 50 stations. With time, the plan became more grandiose with zero progress on the ground as the preferred model of attracting private capital for station modernisation failed to materialise. Under Prime Minister Modi, the station modernisation plan has become grander, with his agenda to redevelop 1321 stations as Amrit Bharat station. PM Modi has already laid the foundation stone to modernise more than 500 stations. The station modernisation plan is now stated to cost more than Rs 80,000 crore over the next few years.

Also, Prime Minister Modi succeeded partially where others failed. He learnt the basic lesson that the way to modernise stations is largely through public finances and he has met with half a dozen initial success stories – Bhopal Rani Kamlapati Station, Gandhi Nagar, Sir Visvesvaraya Terminal Bengaluru, Gomti Nagar Lucknow and most importantly, Ayodhya Dham. The real challenge before Modi 3.0 or whoever forms the next government is to mainstream the station modernisation program and ensure its success after many false starts.

• Border Rail Infrastructure – The last ten years have clearly seen a push to border rail infrastructure of a scale not visualised earlier. In the Northeast, it meant doubling of lines, gauge conversion and new lines. Soon all the state capitals in the northeast will be connected by railway stations. In the last ten years, the government has spent over Rs 50,000 crore in the region on building new railway lines, bridges, tunnels etc and has sanctioned new projects close to Rs 80,000 crore.

It is worth noting here that between 2014 and 2022, a total of 893.82 km of track has been converted to broad gauge, 386.84 km of new lines added, 356.41 km of double lines commissioned, and a survey of 1578 km of new lines were completed. The railway network already connects the state capitals of Assam, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh with broad gauge lines and IR is working to connect all the state capitals. Also, the government gets the credit for fast-tracking the full completion of the delayed Kashmir rail link project.

• Fast-Tracking Railway Electrification (RE) – Historically, in the country, Indian Railways along with the armed forces has been the highest consumer of imported fossil fuel (diesel). The electrification of the Indian Railways must be seen in the above context and that of the commitment of the nation to achieve net zero by 2070.

Railway electrification is one area where it is all kudos to the Modi government. Between 2014-2024, Indian Railways electrified a record 40318 Route Kilometres (RKM) as against 5047 RKM in 2005-2014. As on March 1, 2024, the electrified network of the Indian Railways stands at 62,119 RKM which is about 94 per cent of the total broad gauze RKMs i.e. 65775 RKM, making it the greenest railway network in the world. While electrification per se is laudable, there is a strong case for fast greening of the source of electricity that IR consumes.

• Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) – 1839 km eastern DFC between Ludhiana in Punjab, Dankuni in West Bengal and 1506 km western DFC between Dadri and JNPT, most ambitious railway infrastructure projects were approved in 2006 by then UPA government to be completed by FY 2012 at the combined cost Rs 50,000 crore. However, for myriad reasons, no progress in the project execution happened during the remaining period of the UPA rule. And the NDA government inherited a jinxed project that was troubled since its inception.

In the past ten years, 1337 km of eastern DFC and 1046 km of western DFC have been made operational. Never in the past since independence, a railway project of such magnitude and complexity was completed in such a time frame. This is the nation’s first achievement. However, for the full benefit of the DFC to accrue to the nation, a stuck portion of the eastern DFC (538 km between Sone Nagar and Dankuni) and under construction 460 km of western DFC need to be completed quickly without any further delay, more so because the project cost owing to the time and cost overrun has increased from Rs 50,000 crore to Rs 1,25,000 crore.

• Capital Outlay – A significant achievement of the tenure of Prime Minister Modi is that in the last ten years, the capital outlay of Indian Railways has increased manifold to Rs 2,40,000 crore from around Rs 45980 crore in FY2014-15. This is laudable but not enough. The development of highways and expressways has achieved much higher attention than the development of railways in the past ten years and it is time for course correction. In this connection, there is significant learning available from China, which has zoomed past Indian Railways and as of 2024, has more than 159,000 km of railways including the world’s longest and most extensively used highspeed network a total length of 45,000 kilometres. More importantly, China is adding 2500-3000 km of rail network every year.

While the above achievements are laudable, as the progress of the railroad in China shows, there is a need for a much faster increase of rail infrastructure in the country. And the truth beckons, Indian Railways remains a work in progress with many unticked boxes and an unfinished agenda. More important are as under-

1. Poor finances – Make no mistake, the IR finance remains in tatters. For years altogether, its operating ratio has been precariously close to or more than 100. According to a recent report of CAG, the 2021-22 operating ratio was 107.39 per cent. With the IR spending more than or equal to 100 paise to earn 100 paise, it has ceased to be an ongoing concern and the time is now to revive its finances.
2. Dwindling freight basket – With passenger services perennially a losing proposition for Indian Railways, freight has been its bread and butter. But the problem is that over the past few decades freight basket of IR has dwindled fast; it has become a carrier of low-value commodity items with coal (40 per cent), iron ore (10 per cent) and cement (10 per cent) comprising the key commodities being carried by IR. Despite all the efforts to increase the freight basket, railways are losing more and more high-value freight to much-improved roads and highways, with the result that the total freight being carried out by railways has gone below 25 per cent of the national throughput. Railway has doggedly failed to be an aggregator of high-value smalls.
3. High-cost low-skilled manpower – The IR is managed, maintained and operated by 13 lakh largely low-skilled manpower. I have no compunction in saying that 21st-century railways are managed by 19th-century manpower with 20^th-century skill. Worse, the IR is in danger of entering into a coma, with its earnings insufficient to meet merely salary, pension and other manpower expenses.
4. Safety of passengers, railway staff and public – With all the talk of improved performance in the area of consequential accidents, the track record of the last ten years regarding accidents related to passengers and staff of the IR alike is mixed and the railway is yet to get into the mode of “zero tolerance’ for accidents and incidents including near miss. Non-implementation of an independent safety architecture recommended by the high-powered committee on railways safety headed by noted scientist Dr Anil Kakodkar remains an unfinished agenda.
5. Structural reforms – The IR, as it is organised today, is structurally sub-optimal compared to the gigantic existential challenges before it. It is at a stage where the band-aid will no longer work. Restructuring the IR to meet current and future challenges is the biggest unfinished agenda. And suffice it to say that the creation of the Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS) by collapsing all Class I railway services has gone horribly wrong in implementation.

Much has been done to make the elephant known as the Indian Railways to dance. But all is not well. A lot more needs to be done to first make the IR stay an ongoing concern and then contribute its might to the nation. It is time to rethink, reimagine and reboot the Indian Railways. That remains the unfinished agenda for the next government, and it is neutral to whether it will be Modi 3.0 or some other dispensation.

The author is Multidisciplinary Thought Leader with Action Bias and India Based International Impact Consultant. He works as President Advisory Services of Consulting Company BARSYL. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.