Massacre on the tracks

THE case for the prosecution is easily made. The footbridge at Mumbai’s Elphinstone Road station that shattered the dreams and aspirations of 22 families was waiting to be replaced. It is a similar story with railway tracks, especially in the Indo-Gangetic basin, where trains derail with familiar regularity during monsoons. Reservations are still hard to get and safety of passengers and their belongings is still not guaranteed. Neither is punctuality. Having dialled up expectations to new levels, the Modi government is struggling to deliver while the country is being entertained and wowed with glossy power point slides of futuristic stations with escalators aplenty and glittering shop fronts. The only missing component is the passengers and the staff. And that perhaps characterises the government’s strategy for the railways.

The staff is demoralised, unsure and wary of what the future holds for them in face of the overwhelming itch to dismantle the existing systems and processes while passengers suffer the indignities of stinking waiting rooms, overcrowded trains and below-par food quality. The Planning Commission’s watchful eye is out of the way and transparency curtailed after the scrapping of the Railway Budget. There is no independent oversight about where the funds are being frittered. Does the Chandigarh-New Delhi route need thousands of crores to speed up a 195-minute journey? There is no expert oversight to calculate its rate of return; none either to draw attention to the apparent contradiction of arm-twisting the state-owned railways into shouldering a multibillion dollar project like the bullet train while its revenue earning trunk routes and heavily patronised railway stations are to be turned over to the private sector. 

The blowback from a whimsical approach is on the expected lines. For the first time in 15 years, the railways is running in losses while the debt burden is mounting.  Three ministers for the railways in as many years reveal the Modi government’s inability to come to grips with how the railways has kept going. Having dispensed with transparency and oversight, the results are self-evident.