What ails our railways

If you’re old enough to still look at the morning newspapers, chances are you’ll find news of another train derailment on the front pages every other day. If ‘online’ is your default mode of news discovery, the grimness of this periodic drip of bad news will only hit harder. You’ll not only find graphic images of mangled coaches, and sundry memes and e-chatter, but also have to process the provocation of watching our railway minister finessing the Instagram ‘reel’ of his speedy arrival at the next accident site.

In the past five years, the glory days of Modi 2.0, there have been 45 major railway accidents. Seven collisions and/or derailments have been reported in just the month of July 2024. Is anyone accountable for this? Rather than focus on demanding some answers from people in government, the media cheerleaders of this government, not to forget the PIB (Press Information Bureau), are busy massaging the data of railway accidents in the time of governments past.

Sure, there have been accidents in the time of past governments, and perhaps some lame excuses proffered too by those in power then, but it was this government that made the re-ordering of its priorities so plain. For a start, it did away with the Railway Budget in 2017, merging it into the Union Budget, arguing that the Railway Budget was a relic of the past (yes, it was introduced in 1924) that had outlived its relevance.

In 2015, a NITI Aayog panel headed by Bibek Debroy submitted its report to reform the Railways. The rationale for doing away with the Railway Budget had some features that sound almost reasonable. It would rescue the financial health of the railways and align it with global practices of integrated budgeting for transportation. It recommended an independent regulator; a focus on core services; and offered a diagnosis for why private participation hadn’t taken off in the railways.

A key reason for this, the panel had argued in its report, was that the realms of policymaking, regulation and operations were all vested in the same organisation, namely the then ministry of railways. It recommended that these roles must be separated to sustain largescale private participation. Even while making this argument, the panel clarified that its recommendations did not advocate ‘privatisation’ of the Railways but were a path to greater ‘private participation’ with an independent regulator in place.

Alok K. Verma, a former chief engineer in the Indian Railway Service of Engineers (IRSE), has been among the most vocal critics of the decision to do away with the Railway Budget, arguing that a separate Railway Budget made for detailed discussions and scrutiny of railway projects and finances. The merger, he believes, has led to less accountability and fewer targeted investments in critical railway infrastructure and safety upgrades.

Verma is on point. The Debroy panel recommendations may not be without merit, but with the Union budget subsuming the railway budget, a scrutiny of the government’s priorities — including its spending priorities — when it comes to the Railways has become harder.

Rather than make investments in additional track kilometres to decongest the railway system, on track maintenance and fail-safe signalling, the Modi government’s focus has been on vanity projects — like the Bullet Train between Ahmedabad and Mumbai, the new Vande Bharat trains, the redevelopment of railway stations (553 stations in 27 states and UTs at an outlay of Rs 25,000 crore) — that will give Mr Modi bragging points. Modernisation is a legitimate ambition, but should it take precedence over budgeting for safety?

In its latest report, the CAG (Comptroller and Auditor General of India) has red-flagged the decline in maintenance, inspection and supervision besides delays in replacing rolling stock. The report expresses concern over the growing tendency in the Railways to spend on non-priority works.

There are reportedly over 300,000 vacancies in the Railways, a large chunk of these in jobs with a direct bearing on maintaining safety, but the Railways have been reluctant to fill up these vacancies. What does this mean for safety? Or when routes are congested beyond their carrying capacity? It means overworked personnel and rush jobs on track maintenance because there is no slack in the deployment of infrastructure.

The ideal capacity utilisation of tracks is around 70 per cent, but on about 10,000 km of trunk routes in India, the utilisation is 125 per cent of capacity. Our railways need more tracks.

The most visible effect of acute congestion is that trains slow down, leading to delays. But delays also mean there’s no slack in the schedule, and there is far less time than ideal for maintenance work. Add to this fewer than ideal personnel, and what you have is a bunch of overworked train drivers, guards, stationmasters, trackmen, maintenance staff and officers who are always in fire-fighting mode. You can imagine what that means for punctilious upkeep.