Staying
on the Rails
The
move by the Indian Railways to privatise a section of passenger traffic, and
the launch by Minister Mallikarjun Kharge of the High Speed Rail Corporation,
at this juncture, need to be very closely evaluated. The talk of privatisation
in the Railways has gone on for long, though not many efforts had borne fruit
in the past. There needs to be some clarity and a clear policy on privatisation
in India’s biggest monolithic public sector undertaking. It must be remembered
that only the Railways have an annual budget of their own, outside the general budget.
So long as this route and the Public-Private Partnership model were looked at
from the commercial or goods movement angle, or even for the production of
coaches and locomotives, there was no problem. Obviously, the Railways cannot
keep on investing in new production units. These efforts have succeeded only to
a limited extent. Is that why the Railways have now turned to opening up a
segment of passenger traffic to the private sector? When they speak of high
speed corridors and the need to run trains at 160 kmph or even 200 kmph, it
naturally means creating new infrastructure that calls for massive investment —
which the Indian Railways cannot afford now.
But the decision to offer seven identified high-density traffic corridors to
this model is fraught with danger. Take the Mumbai-Ahmedabad or
Chennai-Bangalore sectors, for instance. Any number of trains or flights on
these routes are bound to be full. Of course, the rail routes have reached a
saturation point and there is need to go in for dedicated, perhaps elevated,
high speed corridors. The
country’s experience with the private sector in the transport field has not
been too good. Air India remains a standing example of how the public sector
was made to lose out to private airlines. Private
bus transport stumped the nationalised road transport corporations for a
variety of reasons. The seven corridors likely to be offered in PPP mode can surely generate enough profits for the private
investor. What do the Railways get from it? Where is the regulator to look at
traffic, tariff, and safety on the rails? The
Commissioner of Railway Safety can handle only the track, and nothing more.
There needs to be a larger debate on this proposal and this government, which
is nearing the end of its current innings, should not be taking such a major
plunge. Having delayed this concept for so many years, nothing will be lost if
all these issues are discussed threadbare, and the new government next year can
take the right decision with all the inputs. Meanwhile, it would do well to
focus on the many major infrastructure projects that are waiting to be
implemented.
