For railways, 2007 may just be remembered as the year when it realised that lack of vision and direction can lead astray a growing success story. The year was filled more with misses than hits, as a number of its major initiatives were delayed or shelved. The most ambitious of these?the dedicated freight corridor (DFC)?is the most glaring instance of these, where the ministry?s indecision about its funding plan has meant that the project is yet to take off. The much-awaited feasibility study by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) finally came through. While the ministry has begun initial survey work for constructing the corridors, issues of alignment and cost have delayed it. So the Cabinet Committee of Economic Affairs has till date only given an ?in-principle? clearance to the project.
Similarly, another dream project of the railways?the high-speed train corridors too have been ?temporarily put on hold? due to the lack of available finances and questions of viability. As far as earnings are concerned, railways passed the fiscal 2006-07 in flying colours and met all its budgeted targets. However, the beginning of the new fiscal saw a significant slump in railway earnings as well. In April and May 2007, railway?s freight earnings witnessed a marked decline, which the ministry blamed on the general economic slowdown, especially in coal and cement production.
A slew of incentives introduced by railways to increase its freight loading during the year have worked in some measure. The problem however continues albeit to a lesser degree. Till November 2007, railways has achieved only 63.8% of its freight loading target amounting to 501.46 million tonne against the estimated 785 mt for the entire fiscal. Freight earnings in the first seven months of the fiscal have amounted to Rs 29,754 crore. Passenger earnings too have registered a slightly lower growth in the period to total Rs 12,869.41 crore, amounting to 64.1% of the budgeted estimate. The ministry is however confident that it will achieve all budgeted targets and do even better.
Safety continued to be another area of concern with about 150 accidents recorded during the year. The lack of direction is also evident in railways? attitude towards public private partnership projects. While railway minister Lalu Prasad has repeatedly shown his keenness on allowing PPP in non-core areas of railways, 2007 saw no major initiatives in this sector, except for modernisation of railways stations. The agri-retailing policy and private luxury trains failed to take off. Neither did private container trains see big tickets players, except for fertiliser major Kribhco taking a licence for this.
Another instance of this lack of vision is the budget hotel fiasco where due to differences within the ministry and with the minister, contracts were cancelled and a number of projects shelved. The budget hotel project has now become a dispute territory with both the Indian Railway Tourism Corporation and the Rail Land Development Authority claiming responsibility for it.
Despite this lack of clarity on policies, the year 2007-08 for railways marks many small successes, which have gone a long way in making a huge difference. Passenger amenities received a huge boost through such small efforts. IRCTC launched a revamped and much more useful train enquiry service, which provides information on arrival and departure schedules, seat availability and also services such as hotel and cab bookings for rail passengers.
Ticket bookings too have become easier with facilities for Internet booking and now plans for booking tickets through mobile phones. Railways stations have also amenities like filtered drinking water and automatic teller machines (ATMs), which are very useful to passengers. Rail tourism has also come of age with a number of tour packages such as the Mahaparinirvan Express that covers major Buddhist sites and tour packages to Vaishnodevi and hill stations. The ministry of railways and tourism have also signed an agreement to promote rail tourism.
Some long planned projects also reached their culmination during the year. For instance, the container train policy finally gathered steam with seven of the 14 (excluding railways run Container Corporation of India) licenced players beginning operations during the course of the year. While the seven manage only about 31 trains between themselves, the operationalisation of the trains? signals beginning of an era of greater openness in the public sector dominated railways.
Another such instance where some progress has been finally made after sustained efforts was when the railways signed a joint venture agreement with National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) to set up a 1,000 megawatt power plant at Nabinagar in Bihar, five years after planning it. Electricity from this Rs 5,352 crore power plant will be utilised for running trains in Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh and the railways are expected to save approximately Rs 600 crore per annum from this venture.
The new-year seems likely to become a make or break year for railways if it has to prove that the delay in projects was only temporary. The railways will however have to work extremely hard to keep up its fine performance in the area of passenger amenities in the coming year.