Let Us Not Blame Talgo... Blame ourselves.

 

The success of Train 18/Vande Bharat express, perceived and real, has transcended all expectations, thanks to its repeated launches by the Prime Minster himself, who fashions it aa a symbol of resurgent and aspirational India. These launches are obviously covered extensively in the media and bring some unintended benefits to me as well as some of these channels cover the story of yours truly and the team which designed and built it. Added to these media stories are narratives floating around on LinkedIn, Facebook and YouTube which are certainly very laudatory. Good enough, I am naturally happy about them.

 

Nearly all the stories which have commanded great viewership or readership are based mainly on certain social media posts, my interviews and  my TEDx talk on the train at Limitless Hyderabad meet of September 2019 which picks up great number of views with every launch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvDLYZ1tm7A&t=24s.

 

The story has been recounted in more than a hundred separate posts and videos each on social media, including those from professional handles, like these, inter alia, which overwhelmed me:

 

@Srinivasan Radhakrishnan on LinkedIn.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6997222734304854016/

Bangla

https://fb.watch/hIMxFG_ynX/?mibextid=2Rb1fB (> 4 M views)

And now in Telugu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQ0-zBILnzU  (> more than 3 lac views)

 

While it is obviously gratifying and barring some imprecisions, the spirit has been caught well, it would have been better if they brought out the ignominy and victimization inflicted on some of the team members just because some Railway Board bosses did not want the train to be successful to satisfy their venal and jealous machinations. Things have indeed improved after the present Rail Minister took over, but full redressal has not happened.

 

I am writing this blog about one inaccuracy which I must clarify. These posts and videos seek to paint Talgo, the Spanish train-builder in a bad light, calling out the high price of Rs 250 cr per train that the company demanded for a train set. It is not true. If Indian Railways (IR) had indeed floated a tender, they would have to do it for at least 15 trains as two trains would be totally bereft of any economies of scale and the price level per train, including the fee for transfer of technology, would indeed be in the range of Rs 250 cr. But no such tender was floated; the only tender which was attempted was for 15 odd train sets, which predated the Talgo experiment and that, in any case, had failed.

 

Talgo is a reputed company with many niche products like articulated bogies and tilting mechanism and they compare with the best in the field of trains for all speeds, including high-speed trains. They had a great ambition to supply trains to India as they are the only developed country which has a track gauge similar to ours, the Iberian gauge of 1668 mm, just 8 mm narrower than our Broad gauge, and rightly so. That the project proved to be a damp squib is largely the fault of Indian Railways. Talgo can only be blamed for being naïve enough to make a pitch for their trains without realizing that they would need to contend with the cussed bureaucracy of IR. In any case, what they offered and tested here was a locomotive-hauled train, not a distributed or concentrated power train set.

 

Wish to know more? I have recounted the ludicrous Talgo story of simple ineptitude and indecision in my blog which does capture the imbroglio:

An Indecisive Indian: Talgo and India’s quest for a modern train

Yes, the bottom line is that Train 18/Vande Bharat express emerged out of the shambles of the Talgo project. But we never fashioned it as something that would compete with the Talgo train.

 

We are not there yet. If we strive to develop our own designs with passion, sense of purpose and above all, pride, we may reach there soon. Ordering trains on multi-nationals and employing their designs on IR may transform the face of our passenger transportation but we would not be truly Atmanirbhar. Hopefully, this would be appreciated clearly.

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