To say that the Indian Railways is facing a severe crisis in its performance would be a gross understatement. Freight accounts for nearly 70 per cent of the railways’ revenues. Its importance in railways’ overall performance is paramount. And woefully, for the past few years, it is the most neglected among all segments of the railways’ operations.
Things have come to such a pass that this year’s first half has clocked a growth of only 1.7 per cent. That too against the Budget target of 8 per cent.
So, it is time to think what can be done. The railway budget is built around a philosophy of low passenger fares (the lowest in the world) subsidised by high freight rates (the highest in the world).
This policy of unrealistic passenger fares vis-à-vis an equally unrealistic regime of high freight rates has proven to be counter-productive for the railways. A steady erosion in IR’s bonfire share in the national freight basket is a grim testimony to this tragedy.
The steady loss of inter-modal share has bedevilled every move of the railway administration to steady its finances. RITES in its Total Transport System Study (TTSS) has estimated that the railways’ share in originating tonnage has come down from 89 per cent in 1951 to 36 per cent in 2007-08.
A McKinsey study says the railways’ share in freight tonne/kms may decline to 25 per cent by 2020 and further to 20 per cent by 2030 if the trend continues. The same report also estimated that such a frugal share of rail mode in the national basket of freight is causing a loss of 4.3 per cent of the GDP at present, which may accentuate to 5 per cent by 2020.
National Transport Development Committee in its report (tabled in 2014) has very strongly recommended that action to regain rail share to 50 per cent must be initiated without any delay in the interest of national economy as well as mitigation of country’s carbon footprints.
To pinpoint the measures required to retrieve the railways’ modal share in freight traffic we have to first understand the factors which set into motion such a steep decline.
The chain of events that culminated in this situation has its genesis in the late 1970s when the originating loading of IR came tumbling down from 212.6 million tonnes in 1976-77 to 193.1 million tonnes in 1979-80.
The innovation deployed to arrest this precipitous decline was to run ‘block rakes’ of traffic from a single originating point to a single destination, precluding any shunting en-route.
The results were electrifying. The originating loading of IR climbed up to 212.8 million tonnes in 1981-82 itself and has maintained an unstinted growth ever since, pushing it into the elite group of four railway systems in the world which lift more than 1 billion tonnes of freight in a year.
But as we know, every medicine has its side effect. The railways, from early times, used to accept traffic in every denomination of weight. Even less than wagon -load consignments were accepted as ‘smalls’ and moved by aggregating them into a wagon (by railways themselves). But now, to avail of railways’ services for freight, one has to offer consignments in terms of 2,400 to 3,600 tonnes. In this sense, the railways has made itself truly elitist in freight sector, denying its services to small manufacturers. The innovation of ‘block rake operation’ caused a steady decline in railways’ share in the national freight basket.
Poor utilisationThere are possibly only two options before us now — either go in for RO-RO (roll on, roll off) arrangement or introduce RoadRailers. Both the methods have their pros and cons. While in RO -RO the trucks (loaded or empty) are made to ride upon a special wagon, RoadRailers have an amphibious design enabling them to move seamlessly on both rail and road.
Both of them are hence able to provide last mile connectivity quite conveniently. A pilot project for running RoadRailers between Palwal and Chennai has already been sanctioned by the Ministry of Railways in 2013, but it has not yet taken off. Such delays only allow unabated drop in the rail share in traffic.
RO-RO is an Indian improvisation to attract ‘less than block rake’ traffic to rail. The motto behind it is ‘if you can’t fight them, join them’. The beauty of the arrangement is that about 40 trucks can be loaded/unloaded within an hour, reducing the terminal detention of the rake. Why this virtue is very important can be understood from the following statistics taken from the Indian Railways Year Book 2012-13:
Wagon km/ wagon day: 265 km
Average speed of freight train: 26.5 km/hr
Loaded empty ratio for wagons: 53:47
Way aheadIt can be clearly seen that a wagon moves for only 10 hours per day on IR. Again, since a wagon runs as loaded for 53 per cent of its moving life, it earns only for 5.3 hours a day!
It can be surmised from this statistics that only 22 per cent of a wagon’s life is at present exploited for freight revenue earning. If lifting of piecemeal traffic is linked to an innovation for ensuring optimum loaded running for wagons, it can surely synergise the operations. RO- RO is one such option.
Terminal detention for loading and unloading activity accounts for about 12 hours of a wagon day. In case of RO-RO it can be easily brought down to 4-5 hours. In addition, suitable rating policy can facilitate running of these wagons as loaded (with trucks, of course) in both directions, raising the loaded empty ratio to 90:10 if not better. It will be a win-win situation not only for both the railways and the road hauliers.
What is imperative to make this a successful binge is a properly designed RO-RO wagon, capable of carrying trucks under OHE wires at 100 kmph. The design of the container wagons, which already run at 100 kmph on 800 mm diameter wheels, is eminently suitable for this modification.
Time is fast running out for the IR to act for regaining its share in the overall transportation cake in the Indian economy.
Unless the Railways’ revenue keeps pace with not only the present inflation rates, but also the boundless demands for debt- servicing, it may soon get stuck in a debt-trap.
The railway minister has to realise that there is an elephant in the drawing room and the sooner it is acknowledged and action taken for its relocation, the better it would be for the financial health of the railways and for the Indian economy.
The writer is former Chairman, Railway Board