A rail for two cities

Guess who?s keeping Delhi and Mumbai from getting as close as Beijing and Shanghai?

Indians are losing a lot because the Indian Railways lacks drive, ambition and imagination. How? Delhi and Mumbai (1,380 km) are about as distant as Beijing and Shanghai (1,320 km). On June 30 last year, China Rail inaugurated a high-speed service which compressed travel time between the two cities to just five hours. A second-class seat on the train costs CNY 550 (R4,400) and a first-class seat CNY 935 (R7,500). Airlines charge R6,500 for the Delhi-Mumbai route. There is little advantage in flying if, in a flight time of two hours, an equal amount of reporting time and time spent on arriving at the airport and reaching the destination at the other end are added (because airports tend to be out of the city). Super-fast trains would knock the stuffing out of air carriers. They could easily capture most of the 64,000 weekly air seats. The Centre for Aviation says Beijing-Shanghai air fares slumped by half in the months following the launch of bullet trains.

At $31 billion or R1.4 lakh crore, the Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway is the costliest single infrastructure project in China?s history, more draining than even the Three Gorges Dam. This is three times the total investment that Indian Railways made in 2011. It is possible that corruption and the rush to complete the project in 42 months inflated costs. That would still make it quite prohibitive. But the cost has to be weighed against the spin-offs: the absorption of high technology, the ripple effects on the economy both during the construction phase and after, the productivity gains from saved time, enhanced safety and reduction in earth-warming emissions. Climate change concerns alone should made an economically thriving India frown on air travel.

The enlightened ones in the railway ministry say there is little technological gain to be made from dedicated freight corridors. Hauling goods at speeds of 100 kmph or more in special lanes does not require cutting-edge skill. Instead, India should invest in high-speed passenger tracks and haul goods exclusively on the ones displaced. This reportedly was the advice of ?Metroman? E Sreedharan.

High-speed train travel has had unintended consequences in China. During the recent Spring Festival, about 70,000 more buses plied as migrant workers returning home found high-speed train ticket unaffordable. On the other hand, competition forced airlines to reduce services on certain sectors. Despite fewer seats, they had to throw in discounts to win back passengers. To make high- speed train travel inclusive, the Indian government may have to provide a subsidy.

I have not studied the economics, but by running high-speed trains closer to each other, the railways should be able to take everybody on board. Our experience with mobile telephony and banking services shows that the poor need not settle for inferior service. Technology and competitive enterprise are egalitarian.

Politicians who resist a fare hike for un-airconditioned passengers seem to have a very poor opinion of them. They refer to them as the ?masses?, as if only fit to travel densely packed, like amorphous lumps. Unreserved second-class fares have risen by just 6% in the past 18 years. Second-class sleeper fares have gone up 44%. During this time, the wholesale prices index has jumped by 295%. Rail travel is perhaps the only other service in India to have become cheaper in inflation-adjusted terms, apart from print journalism in English.

There is just no way that the railways can spare the sweating. Of the 4,000 million non-suburban train passengers last year, only 2.5% travelled under controlled temperatures. Can a charge on these 101 million passengers make up for the remaining 3,900 million? They would shift to airlines. This is why, when Nitish Kumar raised fares in the late 1990s, he calibrated them in such a manner that airconditioned passengers bore a proportionately lower burden.

Three years ago, almost to the month, Mahindra adopted Satyam Computers. Mahindra is now merging it with one of its group entities. A committee of wise men in whose foster care the government entrusted the scam-afflicted company did an excellent job of nursing it into shape and passing it on to guardianship. The government must now do a Satyam on Air India and lavish the attention it now ladles to the beleaguered airline on the Indian Railways. If the government can rescue a private company, can it fail in its duty to a key public undertaking?

The author is senior editor, CNBC TV18