Rail accidents are currently very prominent on the radar screen of India and China. A close look at the issue not only tells us a lot about the two countries’ railway systems but it also offers broad insights. China saw an accident (40 killed, 191 injured) last month in its showpiece high-speed rail system, which shook its middle class. India has just seen an accident claiming two lives, coming on the heels of one involving a prestige train in which 70 lives were lost.
Six years ago, China set out to give itself a 10,000-mile high-speed rail network, which would be the biggest in the world and four times the famed Shinkansen system of Japan. Its leaders planned to use it to not just catch up with developed countries but also leapfrog them. In scale and likely impact on the Chinese economy, the project has been likened to the highway network built in the US during the Eisenhower administration, which helped the country become a modern economy.
Slated for completion in 2020, the railway system will see an investment of around $500 billion. It connects 200 cities at present and is progressing bang on time. Just a month ago, it launched perhaps its most prestigious service, the 820-mile Beijing-Shanghai run — it will cover in five hours a distance that takes nearly four times more time in the US. The plan is to increase the maximum speed from the current 190 miles per hour (mph) to 220 mph, with 90 trains running in each direction daily.
The project is stupendous and through it the Chinese are seeking to not just give their economy a significant boost but also add to their self-esteem and global perception. High-speed trains have already freed up the older railway lines of a lot of passenger traffic, allowing them to be used for more freight traffic which can move cheaper and faster than it did earlier by road. Last year, The New York Times reported recently, through this and other railway projects China carried as much additional freight tonnage as the combined railway systems of the UK, France, Germany and Poland did. Fresh investments in the railway system are impacting the Chinese economy in two ways. One, logistical efficiencies are improving. And two, inland areas, far from the booming coastal regions, are attracting investment on the strength of their lower land and labour costs by becoming more accessible.
Besides, China has planned to get an export benefit out of the high-speed railway system. It wants to leverage the know-how and manufacturing capability it has acquired to compete with leading global suppliers like Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy Industries and France’s Alstom. GE, for example, says The Wall Street Journal, has planned a joint venture in China to leverage Chinese technology and low costs in the area to open up new global markets.
With so much riding on the project, the accident has come as a shock to the Chinese and is likely to impact not just their global business prospects but also their image. The accident in China, the worst in the country since 2008, has resulted in a comparison with the Shinkansen system which has not known an accident in 47 years. When the tsunami hit Japan, its warning system enabled all trains to stop in less than a minute! The Chinese accident has underlined the perception that it is trying to run too fast.
Important as it is for the Chinese economy to get into lower gear, something more serious has happened. Popular criticism of the system and its leadership has exploded. This has been made possible mainly by the Internet and two popular micro-blogging sites. The middle class and internet-savvy bloggers have been ahead of the official machinery and the media in unearthing and sharing information and sharply articulating public opinion. Official censorship, which tried to put a lid on the accident, has repeatedly fallen flat on its face, causing Premier Wen to apologise and promise transparency in investigation.
Now turn to India. Casualties (dead and injured) owing to railway accidents fell to an all-time low in 2007-08 and rose last year to levels not seen since 2003-04. When China was racing ahead, India had an absentee railway minister focused on gaining power in her own state. What is more, the Indian Railway has created a ghastly record of accidents despite trains running at a snail’s pace, which greatly reduces chances of accidents.
The accident in China will undoubtedly disabuse the Chinese of some of their recent hubris. But eventually, they will overcome this setback and succeed in giving themselves a game-changing high-speed rail network. India, on the other hand, clearly does not belong to the global league in an age that has seen the revival of high-speed rail travel in the face of rising energy costs and growing environmental concerns. Since the eighties, Europe has taken the lead in developing technology to transform rail travel. The baton is now being grabbed by China.
India has been cursed twice over. It has adopted a flawed monetarist economic policy focused on fiscal deficit, which prevents the state from borrowing to fund the construction of vital infrastructure. It also has a political system unable to put the railways in the hands of efficient and forward-looking ministers. Similarly, the US political system seems to be held hostage by anti-debt warriors unconcerned about the need for state initiative to rebuild vital infrastructure. The two largest democracies appear politically quite sick while being smugly self-congratulatory about the superiority of their systems over the autocratic Chinese. But the Chinese keep learning from their mistakes. What about India and the US?
