Column : High-speed aspirations on slow tracks

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K Vaidya Nathan : Feb 19 2013, 01:06 IST

The railway budget is expected to be presented on February 27. Recently, Indian Railways announced that it is working on an end-to-end travel solution for passengers, involving doorstep pick-up, porter facility, waiting provision in the executive lounge and assisted boarding, all rolled into one package deal (http://goo.gl/8pWVC). It also announced with much fanfare that it is going to introduce high-speed trains in the country. These announcements seem more like good noises to make as a precursor to the budget, than an imperative implementation strategy.

The proposal for developing high-speed railway line between Delhi and Kanpur via Agra was first mooted in the mid-1980s when Madhavrao Scindia was the railway minister. It was discussed with a sense of definiteness again in 2003 when low-fare airlines started to make significant inroads into premium rail travel traffic. For the last 10 years, every year before the budget, Railways has been making lofty proclamations about introducing high-speed trains, or some such statements about improving rail travel facilities.

For the kind of inefficiency and ineptitude that subsists in railways, it might have become a past tense if it were not a monopoly. We already know the sorry state of affairs of Air India, even though Air India has been comparatively far more efficient than the Indian Railways. The fact that passengers have a right to dignified travel is an idea that is lost on Indian Railways, even though they talk about an end-to-end travel solution.

Consider the way Indian Railways has been depriving the country for decades of

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s subramanyan | 20-Feb-2013Reply | Forward

Agree with the author that our railways need to do a lot of things before being able to offer end to end service of high speed trains. Particularly, the move for introducing high speed trains is ill-advised apart form being costly. Already states are asking for bullet trains just like children asking for toys and toffees; an examples: Thriuvanathapuram-Kasargode high speed at an outlay of Rs. 1,75,000 crores and similar others for which government has already given consultancy assignments. While the country is facing financial constraints, it will simply be foolhardy to venture on high speed trains. Even in Britain, there is a lot of opposition for its HS2 project linking London with Leeds and Birmingham. A full page article appeared early this month in the Telegraph cataloguing the woes of people. One of the remarks made was: why this astronomical expenditure just for serving the elite passengers who wish to be in their bed for a longer time(!);where is the need at all for bullet trains; villagers are afraid that the bullet train route may affect their land values prejudicially; so on and so forth. Remember in our country, in rural areas in the north people still travel on roof tops. For the last over 65 years, express trains between one metro to the other have not been speeded up at all. They have now woken up straight to bullet trains.. For the French President to offer bullet train to India is good for France but the recipient country will certainly have to think twice about this FD offer. One other fancy of IR needs obejctgion: That is gpovt. wants FD to remodel stations. Do we after 65 years of freedom, and claim to be an emerging power, need this to just rebuild railway stations. I expect better guidance and vision from the Rail Bhavan and their experts fixing right priorities. The least they could do is not to land us in further financial soup with such grand plans!