Why is it Vande Bharat alone?

 

An opinion piece titled ‘Not by Vande Bharat alone’ by K. Balakesari, Retd. Member, Railway Board, a frequent contributor in national dailies, inter alia, on railway issues, one of my most clear-headed seniors from Indian Railways (IR)  and a kind mentor, appeared in The Hindu on 28^th April:

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/not-by-vande-bharat-alone/article66786278.ece

Do go through the piece. I, however, capture the essence of what he wrote here with my telegraphic comments in blue.

Performance of the IR should not be reduced for judgment to certain well-publicised services. Most of the news about the Indian Railways concerns Vande Bharat trains, given that every train is being personally falgged off by the Prime Minister. There is a touch of wry irony here as within months of the launch of the first train in February '19, Vigilance investigations were instituted against the leader and the team of the project on wholly specious grounds. True. 

The project was wholly conceived, executed with élan in record time by the team of talented and committed officers of Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai, with minimum official support; thankfully, the witch hunt came to naught. But today, it seems it is raining Vande Bharats all over the country, a unique example of the success of a local initiative driving policy at the highest level. True. One has to be somewhat empathetic to appreciate this travesty; the PM himself acknowledging that the train represented the spirit of new India while the team which worked hard with a sense of purpose to deliver this train was hounded by venal and diabolical machinations by minions of the government. And after the net result of this Vigilance enquiry was zilch, the train is repeatedly highlighted as a symbol of resurgent India. One caveat: the train is indeed changing the face passenger travel in India and this is so entriely, yes entirely, because the PM has adopted the train as something Indians have created as a baby of their own. In the absense of his intervention, the babudom of IR would have blown the train away to nothingness.

In this euphoria over the trains, the larger picture for IR and major issues confronting it are lost sight of. With the merger of hitherto separate national and rail budget, Capex in IR has gone up multiple times, through budgetary support and institutional borrowings; lately, mainly through budgetary support, as IR’s debt burden is also mounting. While this unprecedented investment is welcome for our growing economy, it must result in transport capacity build-up and highlighting only inputs without looking at the outcome serves no meaningful purpose. Well-articulated, goes without saying.

The National Rail Plan 2030 (NRP) envisages increase in modal share of freight traffic from 27% to 45%, increase in average speed of freight trains to 50 kmph from the present 25 kmph and reduction in freight tariffs by 30% to reduce India’s very high logistics cost. Recent increase in freight traffic has taken place mainly due to carriage of coal, which may not last long whereas there is no evidence to show any serious diversification of commodities carried or increase in modal share. In other words, we are still near or at the starting block in spite of heavy investments. No cavilling here.

While there is a thrust to remodel stations to ‘international standards’, improvement in its low level of punctuality (the manipulated statistics would shows 90% whereas real-time punctuality picked up at random would throw up 60%) is nowhere on the horizon. IR should aim for 90% punctuality based on real-time data at select intermediate stations enroute, albeit a challenging target. Makes sense, after all punctuality and reliability of passenger trains is of utmost importance. Think of the airlines which failed to be punctual.

In addition to these, the author opines that the issues of financial and physical performance, customer satisfaction, HRD, project execution and impact of Dedicated Freight Corridor on IR are issues which should also be in focus. Absolutely.

Mr.Balakesari concludes by opining that instead of a publicity-oriented Year Book, IR should table an Annual Performance Report which would be like an internal audit to help policy-makers and researchers alike. Although IR may resist this, the nation can ill-afford that the performance of its prime transporter be judged merely by the number of Vande Bharat trains or  occasional glitzy stations. Yes, inescapable if IR strives to become a world-class system.

Now, as you can say, while the author does not belittle or downplay Vande Bharat Express, he has put forward a recipe for meaningful advancement of IR, particularly in the face of massive investments.

I had many people writing to me with their take on this opinion piece. Unfortunately, there is a large lot in the country today who fail to see things in perspective. They tend to put their binary prism on and look at even objective analysis as something meant to denigrate the government. Signs of the times! Nevertheless, I will go into observations from someone (reproduced verbatim), well-read and seemingly well-meaning, who wanted to know more and so I add my bit in blue again:

Observations: As a reader of newspaper articles on matters of national significance, I was rather surprised to this article. My points are purely 'conceptual' and therefore are 'invariant' of the 'personalities' associated with them. As an informal Social Sciences researcher, I request you to kindly, enlighten me on the following points. 

1. Was there some 'controversy' over the 'Train 18' version of the 'Vande Bharat' that the Train 18 had to be 'rechristened'?

The author’s singular line on the controversy and the irony thereof is very pithy. While omitting to understand the unfortunate negativity by the corrupt, the observer has misconstrued it is as a controversy related to the name where none exists. Train 18 was the name given to the train in 2017 by me, the leader, and the team of the project to convey the sense of urgency that the prototype of the path-breaking train must be out of ICF in year 2018 itself. That happened, and that too in 18 months to relive up to its name, and the train caught the imagination of the country. The PMO was able to perceive the impact the train had, and would have, and gave it a wonderful generic nomenclature, Vande Bharat.

2. Normally, the truly 'professional' workers are 'status/stature/designation' independent and as a result, the world could produce the likes of 'Faraday'...However, this article seems to suggest that the Railways is not paying 'heed' to the Operational Efficiency aspects, in its quest for some 'publicity' gimmicks. (The non-publication of a separate 'Railway Budget' seems to hide [according to the article] the operational inefficiencies of the Railways). Can this point be 'conceptually' validated?

Conceptually validated? Am I missing something here? It sounds important but does not penetrate my limited faculties. The primary purpose of railways is to ferry goods and people in an efficient and cost-effective manner and the absence of focus in these two areas has been brought out by the author succinctly.

3. India's quest for 'indigenisation' started in the early days of our Independence but our progress on 'indigenisation' was rather slow. However, the conceptualisation, design and manufacture of Vande Bharat, surely is a matter that every Indian should be proud of. It is not that the earlier era engineers were any less committed to the task of 'indigenisation'; it was only that the 'enabling' environment was lacking which encouraged 'manipulative' professionalism.​ Can we expect more 'professionalism' ('non-manipulative' kind) in the Railways functioning in the days ahead?

That the enabling environment has improved tremendously is debatable. Yes,  leaders like General Managers and Divisional Railway Managers have indeed been empowered by this government, particularly when Mr. Suresh Prabhu was the minister. Let us leave Vande Bharat apart as the opening statement of the author’s article tells all. What is the qualitative improvement in this enabling environment and what evidence can we show to buttress that? Needs scrutiny.

4. For instance, we 'encouraged' innovative CEOs (like V.Krishnamurthy, SAIL) who could offer 'simplistic' solutions that turned the SAIL profitable. We simply had to 'jack up' the Administered Price of Steel. ​​​​Therefore, in the pre-liberalised India, 'manipulative' capabilities outsmarted 'professional' competencies in the Indian PSUs that has an impact on the Indian Railways.

This is a declaration which I have no capability to verify. All I can say is that V Krishnamurthy was like a guardian angel of PSUs and he left behind an unmatched legacy. Yes, such great figures often come with controversies. It would be rather pretentious for me to break down his contribution to this matter of administered pricing and fashion him as a ‘manipulative’ leader.

5. We all know that the Indian professionals working in foreign lands seem to produce better results than their counterparts on the native soil. Therefore, a more 'enabling' mind-set of the bosses guiding our development policies would help the nation progress faster.

Nothing to disagree here. But the ‘bosses’ needs to be defined clearly: the political and perhaps more importantly, our bureaucratic bosses who preside over huge spend of people’s money without commensurate benefits.

There are more observations from others too but I have covered the main points. I conclude by borrowing from the bard’s Polonius in Hamlet, recalling the bit about the fatherly advice from him to Laertes, for anyone who cares to heed:

“…This above all,—to thine own self be true…”

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