Kisan Rail to reduce transport cost of perishables by Rs 1,000 a tonne

The scheduled time of a one-way journey is 31 hours and 45 minutes. This travel time is 15 hours less than the time taken in transporting such produce by road

The Indian Railways' Kisan Rail service, which began operating from Friday, will lower the transport time of perishable foodstuff like fruit and vegetables by 15 hours and reducee the cost on farmers by Rs 1,000 per tonne when compared with ferrying by road.

The service started as a pilot project from Deolali in Maharashtra to Danapur in Bihar.

The train is currmntly planned with 10 parcel vans with a total capacity to carry 238 tonnes of cargo. For now, it will be a weekly service operating every Friday form Deolali, and returning on Sunday from Danapur.

The scheduled time of a one-way journey is 31 hrs 45 minutes. This travel time is 15 hours less than the time taken in transporting such produce by road, officials said.

The train travelled to Danapur via Nasik, Manmad, Jalgaon, Bhusawal, Burhanpur, Khandwa, Itarsi, Jabalpur, Satna, Manikpur, Prayagraj Cheoki, Deen Dayal Upadhyay Nagar, and Buxar.

The Nasik/Bhusawal region has huge production of fruits as well as green vegetables, such as onions and green chilies. This produce was moving largely by road towards the eastern part of the country, and Railways' share in this transportation was miniscule," an official said.

"But with the efforts of Railway officials, this traffic is now coming towards Railway as the time to be taken by Rail is approximately 15 hours lesser than by road, and the freight charges are also cheaper by more than Rs 1,000 per tonne, the official said.

Any farmer, or any other interested party, can directly book their consignments on this train without any lower limit on the size of the consignment.

"The consignment can be as small as 50-100 kgs, and can be booked from any stopping station to any other stopping station, giving full flexibility (to farmers)," the official said.

Officials also said in case there was any loss or damage to any products for some reason, the Railways will follow its usual claim/compensation system.

In this pilot project, no refrigerated wagons were used.

Earlier, when Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman proposed to set up a Kisan Rail' through the public-private-partnership (PPP) mode for a cold supply chain to transport perishable goods in her Budget speech, the Railways said nine such refrigerated vans were already available on its network.

Railway Board Chairman VK Yadav had said these vans, with a carrying capacity of 17 tonnes each for transportation of highly-perishable parcel traffic, were developed and procured through the Rail Coach Factory at Kapurthala.

Temperature-controlled perishable cargo centres were commissioned at Ghazipur Ghat (U.P.), New Azadpur (Adarsh Nagar, Delhi) and Raja ka Talab (U.P.) as a pilot project under the Kisan Vision Project by Container Corporation of India Limited (CONCOR) through a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiative.

Another project is under construction at Lasalgaon in Maharashtra's Nasik.

Approval has been granted to the Central Railside Warehousing Corporation to develop temperature-controlled storage facilities at Fatuha and Mancheswar. A cold storage facility has also been developed at Dadri.

The Railways has also procured 98 reefer (ventilated, insulated) rail containers with a carrying capacity of 12 tonnes per container. They were procured through CONCOR for the movement of fruits and vegetables to different parts of the country.

The proposal to use refrigerated parcel vans to ferry perishables was first announced by then Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee in the 2009-10 Budget. However, it had failed to take off.

Once this cold chain is ready, officials said the Railways was set to significantly help in increasing incomes of farmers.

"Out of nearly 2,000 loaded freight trains running every day, around 10 trains are of perishables - onion is the main commodity here. When loaded in wagons we are nearly 25 per cent cheaper, when loaded in parcel we would be around 10 per cent cheaper approximately. As of now we are pretty insignificant in perishables but since there are volumes here we have targeted this for getting a larger share," an official said.