EDITORIAL --- THE HINDU dtd 5th November 2013
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.
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COMING, PRIVATISATION OF RAILWAY PASSENGER SEGMENT
Dated 30 th October 2013
The Railways on Tuesday set the ball rolling for privatising its passenger segment on its existing infrastructure with the launch of theHigh Speed Rail Corporation (HSRC).
Railway Minister Mallikarjun Kharge launched the HSRC as a fully-owned subsidiary of Rail Vikas Nigam Limited, which his predecessor Nitish Kumar had set up with the objective of raising extra budgetary resources — from the market and private investors.Mr. Kharge, however, issued a word of caution against adopting new technology.
NO TECHNOLOGY FOR GRATIS
“You should not buy horses merely because horse shoes are freely available,” was Mr. Kharge’s caution. He stressed how technology could be made available for even free. “At times they tell us how cheap it is. The question is whether it suits us or not, not whether it is cheap or free.” He launched the corporation at an “International Conference on HighSpeed Rail Travel — Low Cost Solutions.”
Mr. Kharge, however, underlined the need for high speed rail while focusing on providing a mass mode of safe, reliable and affordable transport. Railway Board Chairman Arunendra Kumar said the Corporation, as the implementing agency, would contribute in the joint venture to be formed under the Public Private Partnership mode. The other stakeholders could be the State governments and private investors, explained corporation chairman Satish Agnihotri.
SEVEN ROUTES
The Railways have identified seven routes — all commercially viable — on which the mini high speed trains with a speed of 160 km per hour to 200km per hour would be operated under the PPP mode. Officials maintained a stoic silence when asked if the railways were giving away the most viable routes to the private sector.Some of the routes identified are Ahmedabad-Mumbai, Amritsar-Ludhiana-Chandigarh-Delhi, Agra-Lucknow-Varanasi-Patna, Chennai-Thiruvananthapuram and Bangalore-Chennai. The first project to be implemented under the scheme will be the Mumbai-Ahmedabad route.
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