Start big ticket reforms to keep Railways relevant

The Indian Railways (IR) lost 19.1 crore passengers between 2013-14 and 2014-15 and is estimated to lose about 36 crore passengers between 2014-15 and 2015-16. But, those who have been keeping track of rail passenger growth in relation with other modes over the years will not be shocked over the development. Because the market share of rail in passenger travel (in terms of passenger km) has been consistently decreasing from 74 per cent in 1950-51 to about 12 per cent in 2014-15.

Although passenger travel has been increasing at an average rate of about 1.5 times that of GDP growth since 1950-51 in India, the IR did not augment its capacity. The capacity was not enhanced either by installing new infrastructure or improving the quality of the existing infrastructure and rolling stock or streamlining its operations to improve its throughput and to provide faster travel on par with road or air to capture this demand.

Till now, the reduction in the share of rail in passenger travel has been dexterously hidden in the increase in the absolute number of passengers for IR that includes the huge suburban passengers. The patronage for IR has reached such a nadir now that the absolute number of passengers for IR started declining.

Even with the expected additional 1.92 crore long distance reserved passengers in 2015-16, it appears that not only the IR is losing in terms of absolute number of passengers, but also losing on absolute passenger-km, a real concern for IR.

It was reported that the loss of passengers has been in suburban passengers and short distance non-suburban passengers who essentially travel by unreserved compartment at a highly subsidised fare. Then why they should desert train over road?

Suburban train travel conditions are extremely harsh that crush load (where 14 to 16 passengers travel in one square meter of floor space) is not uncommon during peak hours. Given this, it is not fair to expect that the patronage for suburban rail would continue to increase, however bad the alternative modes are.

In the case of short distance non-suburban segment, the unreserved passengers have been either decreasing or stagnating over the years. For instance, the number of passengers travelled between the origin-destination pair of Ahmedabad – Vadodara (rail distance of 100 km and a road distance of 115 km) stood at 34,97,517 and 33,60,106 in 2009-10 and 2010-11 respectively, for unreserved passengers (dip of 3.93 per cent), whereas for the reserved passengers, these values stood at 67,989 and 90,886 (growth of 33.68 per cent) in the same period. The average fares were about Rs 16 and Rs 120 for unreserved and reserved categories respectively.

In addition to the plenty of ordinary buses plying between Ahmedabad and Vadodara, during 2011, the Gujarat State Road Transport Corporation (GSRTC) also introduced Volvo bus service between Ahmedabad and Vadodara and now there are about 68 Volvo schedules in both directions together every day  with a fare of about Rs 200 with an average headway of about 30 minutes.

Why should passengers prefer to travel by reserved coaches of rail, ordinary and luxury buses that too at a price which is about seven to 10 times that of unreserved rail coach fares?

With better roads and plenty of ordinary and luxury buses plying between cities all throughout the day with many boarding and alighting points within the city limits, bus journey become more accessible and comfortable for distances up to 250 km, in comparison with the crowded and painful journey in unreserved compartments of rail. The lack of availability of reserved seats/berths in express/mail trains for short distance travel also pushed the passengers to road.

The swelling number of passengers for reserved class of rail and luxury bus and the dip in unreserved rail coaches revealed that passengers don’t mind paying higher costs for better travel conditions.

Archaic mindset

There is a caveat. The above analysis holds good only for regions where there are alternative modes available for the passengers to move away from unreserved coaches of rail and where the economic well-being of the passengers is better.

The cancerous cells of too much centralisation, rigid organisation structure, lack of freedom to plan and operate at zonal level and failure to bring in private players aggressively to augment IR’s infrastructure on par with other infrastructure ministries have grown too much in the last decade.

The archaic mindset that IR should maintain monopoly over rail mode even if it means erosion and disappearance of rail mode have brought rail mode to a comatose stage. If somebody thinks that rail mode would disappear, if it is taken out from the aegis of IR, s/he is mistaken.

There are about two dozen cities which are either already operating or developing metro rail for their cities. None of these metros, except Kolkata Metro is under IR. Had Delhi Metro, the first modern rail system, been brought under IR, neither Delhi Metro nor other metros would have developed as fast as it had happened and provide the quality of service it offers right now.

Among all the modes, rail offers the least negative externalities and hence it has to be nurtured and allowed to grow in the larger interest of the nation. Although the present railway minister cannot be held responsible for all the mess that has happened over the decades, he is left with an unenviable task of bringing back rail mode from critical condition.

Without big ticket reforms, rail mode becomes completely irrelevant to the travel needs of Indians. Therefore, the railway minister has to carry out big ticket reforms on war footing; some of them are already outlined in various reports, including the recently submitted Bibek Debroy report, in order to liberate rail mode from the clutches of IR.

(The writeris a Doctorate in Public Systems from IIM-Ahmedabad. Views are personal)