Better project skills required

EXPERT VIEWS

J P Batra
Former Chairman, Railway Board

Overall, one gets the sense that Railway Minister Lalu Prasad has taken care of all stakeholders, including Indian Railways, which comes across as a vibrant entity with better internal generation of resources. Some of the things that emerge are that the railways' real share of traffic is at around 40 per cent, which it wants to increase further.

Every organisation, whenever it does well, wants to share the benefits. Accordingly, passenger fares have been held, even as earnings have gone up by 14 per cent, while upper-class earnings and traffic rose by 20 per cent. The fare cuts in air-conditioned classes will lead to seats going full and the railways would continue to face competition (from low-cost airlines) head on.

The budget has also spelt out a very good direction in the case of the freight corridor, although I wish there had been greater clarity on the remaining corridors identified in the last budget. On the passenger side, a number of forward-looking measures have been announced, including steel-bodied coaches, increased seats, disposable toilets.

The initiative on preparing a blueprint for the high-density network suggests that the railways are moving to the next stage for capacity augmentation, including dedicated freight corridors, bypasses etc, which will lead to better integrated planning.

One area that needs special attention is project management and execution as the railways has to expand at a fast pace. The challenge is humongous as Indian Railways will carry 6.6 billion passengers this year, much more than the world's population.