With no less than 54 projects in hand,totaling an investment of over R29,057 crore, Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd (RVNL) a wholly owned subsidiary of Indian Railways, has plenty on its plate to keep it busy for the next one decade or so.

These projects involve 2,689 km of track doubling, 263 km of gauge conversion, 798 km of new lines, 1,654 km of electrification and 66 km of metro projects, the last being mostly in Kolkata, which the former railway minister Mamata Banerjee, now as chief minister of West Bengal, would very much like to see fast-tracked.

The promptness with which RVNL had taken up some of her pet projects like the locomotive components factory at Dankuni, the diesel multiple unit manufacturing facility at Sankrail (now being built at Haldia ? both with a potential for creating jobs) and extension of the Kolkata Metro network have apparently helped to boost Banerjee?s credibility as an achiever, perhaps even helping her at the hustings a few months ago.

Born out of the necessity to speed up a large number of urgently needed additions to railway infrastructure, RVNL came into being in January 2003 under the Company?s Act, 1956. A special purpose vehicle (SPV), it is a fully owned subsidiary of the railway ministry and follows the provisions of the Railways Act, 1989, and became fully operational from March 2005 on appointment of the board of directors.

Its original mandate to strengthen four mega bridges along the Golden Quadrilateral ? on the Ganga, (Munger), Brahmaputra (Bogibeel), Kosi and Nirmali ? provide port connectivity and raise resources from the market has undergone some changes.

RVNL is now actively pursuing various models such as SPVs and the build operate and transfer model, apart from seeking Asian Development Bank funding to finance the projects instead of depending solely on market borrowings, which can sometimes prove to be prohibitively expensive.

In a major departure from the normal mode of funding of projects by the railways, it has been singularly successful in adopting the public-private partnership route and in maintaining a debt-equity ratio of just 2.3:1. With only 13% as equity, it has garnered on an average 18% contribution by the stakeholders and the rest as debt from the market. In the process it had to relearn the finer points of preparing a detailed project report and bankability reports, ensure financial closure, resource mobilisation and execute projects on a fast-track basis.

Among some of the innovative inputs have been construction of a 87 m long subway under 12 rail tracks by adopting the box pushing technology in Chennai, developing 45 m long pre-stressed concrete girders fit to carry 30-tonne axle loads, and setting up of 60 cu m/hr capacity computer-controlled automatic batching plants.

Despite the plethora of projects, it has managed to keep a lean organisation with just under 270 employees located, ?besides the four metros, at some of the major cities like Secunderabad, Bhubaneswar, Bhopal, Raipur, Jaipur, Pune, Hubli and Bilaspur. Starting with just R357 crore in 2003-04, it has logged up an impressive cumulative expenditure of R9,322 crores in 2010-11, completing no less than 23 projects including two major bridges, a 3-km second one on the Mahanadi and a 4.6-km bridge on the Vallarpadam-Idapally stretch along with railway electrification.

It has also managed to convert the 215-km Phulera-Rewari and 80-km Phulera-Ajmer sections from metre gauge to broad gauge, while at the same time adding a double line, providing vital direct link for freight from the north to ports in Gujarat and beyond, eliminating the circuitous route via Jaipur and cutting down on transit time.

By end of last year it had recorded an impressive tally of 1,590 km of gauge conversion, 662 km of doubling, 194 km of new lines and 1,335 km of track connected with railway electrification.

Lending a major helping hand to export drive, it is providing rail connectivity to five projects, starting with the 301-km Kutch-Gandhidham railway line. The Kutch Railway Company Ltd, an SPV created for this purpose, has already paid a dividend of R3 crore for 2008-09 and R10 crore for 2009-10.

Considerable progress has also been made by two more SPVs ? Bharuch-Dahej Railway Company Ltd for gauge conversion of the 62-km Bharuch-Samni-Dahej line and Krishnapatnam Railway Company Ltd for a 122-km new line from Krishnapatnam to Obulavarapille. Unfortunately, land acquisition woes of Orissa have hit the 82-km new line from Hardaspur to Paradip port though some head way has been made for the 99-km alignment from Angul to Sukinda.

Perhaps the most important factor of RVNL?s entering into a large number of projects has been its success in attracting some of India?s big-time construction companies. The list reads like a who?s who of the infrastructure world, including the likes of Larsen & Toubro, Tata Projects, Simplex, IVRCL, Nagarjuna Construction, BBJ, Gammon, Afcons, ECIL, MCML Private Ltd, DS Construction, etc.

It has also led to higher transparency in the tender processing, better quality, higher reliability in project implementation and most importantly, absence of any local or extraneous constraints associated with small-ticket projects.

With the Prime Minister himself now being in overall charge of the railway portfolio and his emphasis on three key areas, namely, strengthening the Golden Quadrilateral, and strategic link to the Kashmir valley and the northeast, RVNL would perhaps sooner than later have to enter the northeast region too, where a plethora of new challenges await it.

The writer is former member (mechanical), Railway Board.

email: acharya@bol.net.in