On Thursday, Ashwani Lohani took charge as Chairman, Railway Board, amid two back-to-back rail accidents resulting in some senior heads rolling in the Railway Board and the Railway Minister tweeting his intention to quit but the Prime Minister asking him to wait.
From being CMD of Air India to heading the Rail Board, Lohani must have charted out his own course, as indicated in his statement after taking over — that safety and modernisation would be his priorities.
That said, some former Rail Board chairmen feel that had they been in Lohani’s shoes, their ‘To Do’ list would have included steps like giving time for maintenance, going back to the basics of train operations and lowering the time required to be spent by managers to respond to social media queries and posts.
SS Khurana, former Railway Board Chairman, told
VK Agarwal, also former Railway Board, Chairman, said: “Maintenance time is important. Traffic block was the birthright of the maintenance man even it meant cancellation and detention of passenger trains,” he said, adding that building maintenance time into the work time table is non-negotiable.
Agarwal, however, pointed out that the times now are different, as mechanised track maintenance takes more time. “Now, maintenance time between two sections – say, of 10-15 km stretch — is done by machines that require blocks of two hours or more,” he said.
The Railway tracks along the Golden Quadrilateral and its diagonals are over-saturated. Theoretically, tracks are supposed to run with 70 per cent saturation. “We can run much more trains, which basically mean congested tracks, with some trains reaching in even 10 days,” added Agarwal, who has been the General Manager of Northern Railway, a zone that handles the maximum number of passengers.
Social mediaKhurana, who has also been Member-Staff of Indian Railways, which employs over 13 lakh staff, feels that managing personnel, such as Divisional Railway Managers (DRMs) and General Managers (GMs), should be allowed to focus on core work rather than being made personally responsible for responding on social media on queries, such as passenger amenities.
“Many a times, when I am sitting with DRMs, GMs, I realise they are busy tracking Twitter on their phones and replying to amenities issues raised by passengers. Not that passenger amenities are not important. But, this can be handled by another cell, and only significant issues should be brought to them,” said Khurana, pointing out that this takes away from the time that managers should be spending on core issues.
Khurana was also of the view that safety needs to be “hammered” into the mind of field staff with periodic drills so that they remember that they cannot take certain steps even in their wildest dreams.
“There are rules that allow staff to raise a flag, or put detonators on tracks,” Khurana said, adding that it is important to empower the staff. He, however admitted that, practically, it was almost impossible to get traffic blocks.
Fencing tracksThere is also a need to speed up the dedicated rail freight corridor so that the present track lines along the corridor and its diagonals are free for use by passenger trains, said Agarwal, adding that these lines should be strengthened to run trains with 160 kmph and even some trains with 200 kmph, with fencing along the tracks.
“This can be done over the next 10 years,” putting India on the world’s high-speed map, apart from helping meet environment norms as well.
Summing up, Agarwal said: Any transport has three components – operations and maintenance, modernisation and expansion. All three have to be tackled simultaneously.
Optimal usage of track while allowing for maintenance, developing capacity along dense routes through dedicated freight corridor; modernising the present network; and expanding to new areas will ensure job creation, connectivity, and higher rail share, he said.
Technology foresight requires you to look at the social, cultural and financial context and accordingly adopt technology, Agarwal added.