A white paper from the railways is eagerly looked forward to as it offers a whole lot of data which is not always readily available. It also adopts a longer-term perspective than do annual budget speeches. This helps inform the view on where the organisation is headed and what needs doing to get it to move along the right course. The latest exercise sets out to do something more — debunk the record of the previous minister, Lalu Prasad, and in particular question the unprecedented Rs 90,000 crore of cash surplus that he claimed the railways generated under him. Any attempt to remove window dressing from financial reporting and paint a truer picture should be welcomed. But the manner in which the exercise has been carried out raises the issue whether Ms Banerjee is more interested in running down her predecessor than delivering good performance herself. It also takes away from the forward-looking nature of the exercise. In the public slanging match between Ms Banerjee and Mr Prasad, debate on the future of therailways should not take a back seat.
Mr Prasad’s notion of a cash surplus can certainly be disputed; in any case it was not a part of the railways accounts proper. But what cannot be questioned is that the railways worked better under him, captured foremost by the operating ratio which indicates the amount of earnings that go into running operations. This key figure improved, that is, it went down (lower proportion of earnings was utilised to run operations), by full 15 percentage points to reach 75.9 per cent in 2007-08 from 91 per cent in 2004-05. Even if accounting norm changes have contributed altogether 3.5 percentage points, then that still leaves a substantial figure to rejoice over. Particularly unfortunate is the white paper’s reference to wear and tear while pointing to the additional loading in wagons that was allowed under Mr Prasad. This went a long way in enabling the railways to meet the challenge of carrying the additional traffic during the boom years even though it did not have the additional capacity. The move was widely welcomed at the time because it was, in fact, giving de jure recognition to what was already happening on the ground — systematic overloading of wagons — which enabled the railways to claw back a part of the earnings it was losing. If enhancing the permitted load led to greater wear and tear, then that would have shown up by now, causing mishaps.
In looking at the future, the vision document, released with the white paper, asks for substantially higher budgetary allocation so that the country has a better and bigger railway network. Few would grudge this, except that enthusiasm for the railways would go up if it was seen to be running its affairs better. The documents reveal how poorly the Indian Railways fare, in comparison to other major railways, in output per employee. In terms of geographical density, the Indian Railways fared much better than China in 2008 but the latter has undertaken a massive expansion and the picture will soon look different. The loss in carrying passengers is galloping (it reached a massive Rs 14,000 crore last year) while passenger earning growth remains minuscule. Ms Banerjee has her task cut out. It is better to look ahead than complain too much about the past.