Bharat Rakshak

Where will the money to replace coaches, engines, tracks, bridges etc come from? How much can the government subsidize? Where will the money come from? The government is spending on NREGA, railways, fuel subsidies, fertilizer subsidy etc. How much can they tax the middle class ? Middle class too wants the income tax ceiling raised. You can't tax the middle class, or not provide subsidy to poor, and how much can you tax the rich who are a miniscule percent of population?

Even with the current raise, the government is still providing 4000 crores subsidy.

thomas, no one here is arguing for a railways run on a profit motive. but social service should be in tune with the state of your coffers, otherwise it becomes a case of killing the golden egg laying goose.

right now rail has no money for better infrastructure, improving safety or introducing modern technology. who do you think suffers ? it's the very same common man you are arguing for. do you think he cares about paying Rs 30/- extra if that meant better service ?

Are you a commie? Your post sounds like commie talk to me. Guess what? communism failed. Even China has junked communism out keeping only the name to justify the CCP's existence.

You sound as like money grows on trees.

If the finmin isnt going to up the railway subsidy and fares aren't hiked, how long can the railways run on a deficit? The railways isnt only about running costs like salary, fuel, power etc. Its also about long term commitment like bridges, tracks, new projects, rolling stock for newer trains etc. How the heck are they going to afford all this, cater to greater number of people who're all clamouring that the railways isnt catering to them right now, greater population of passengers. Fluff?

Easy on attacking people as commies. It is a popular view amongst travelers for no fare increases, status of IR be damned. The truth is IR needs to break even. This can only happen with freight increasing. Which is where the freight corridors come in. also note that 80% of revenue increase was by increasing fares 20%. gives a sense of the proportions.

IR can never fund capital expense like bridges, renew stations, replace coaches, etc from operating income. GOI is going to have to provide on order of 200 Billion per annum over next 30 years to have any hope of modernizing the system. That is what it is going to take. Something like Rs 5-10 Trillion over next 30 years

>> it is a popular view amongst travelers for no fare increases, status of IR be damned.

not true. there is widespread public support for raising fares. at least it's so in WB.

The fare increase is marginal, almost negligible for the poor. The increase is targeted more towards AC travelers who can certainly afford to pay.

Beside any hike in freight cost ultimately gets passed down to the consumer, or to the same poor people. In case of accidents due to poor maintenance of infrastructure, the same poor people again pay.




Railway budget highlights

As I said no fare increase is very 'popular'. People may reluctantly agree to an increase but that does not make it a popular move.

every city on rail network of >5L souls needs IR to hand over the station to be razed and rebuilt under pvt ownership . just scraping off the fossilized human excreta and urine salt deposits would take months of hard work. IR will need to subsidize these owners and also let them commercialize the place restaurants/food courts/malls/hotel rooms and make profits on it. a place with 1000s of footfalls a day can make money if offerings designed for the economic level of the clients is put on table. its the mismatched places that lose money like say a DLF emporia mall in a low income town.

we also need to explore widespread pvtly run trains on IR network apart from just the luxury tourist trains. if airspace controlled by AAI cant have multiple airlines why should IR rule the roost based on public money?

pvt trains might lure the rich back to rails for inter city routes. atleast one could sleep peacefully without keeping an eye out for urine smells or roaches.

anyone seeing the GOVT BUILT and RUN stations in China would hang their heads in shame at the IR stations
one may smirk complacently about misallocation of capital, but infact it is efficient allocation of capital if a widely used system like IR ror china rail serves its clients better...its not some billion$ spaceport being built.
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=224115

as Theo says, $10b of govt capex is needed/annum to reach anywhere near as good (iirc PRC has been something like $90b/annum on HSR+railway for a while now and the spending shows in above pics) .. wake up folks, WAP7 and IRs current coach tech is like a Mig21FL in todays playground....the game has taken quantum leaps and we are still on the bottom rung.

Theo saar, it may not be popular but there is widespread understanding of the need. star ananda, a pro TMC channel conducted numerous interviews of passengers at rail stations and couldn't find a single person speaking against the fare increase. all the newspapers have praised the rail budget in unison.

It would be easier to have single or double % increases every year as opposed to these huge hikes required at intervals.

Pls. no personal brandish to prove your point, communi, capitali or Religionist - those are convenient politicians terms invented to side track issues. Poor people are so busy trying to meet their day-to-day ends, and has no time to complain or whine about ever increasing prices and people not complaining in TV (what sort of argument is that ?). Even if they do, they knew they have no leverage as politicians grind their beliefs/truths to personal gains.
Tell me how does corporate companies cut down their costs and still run efficiently without shooting up their services/products price, I believe the answer in running IR efficiently just lies there.

The problem arises because the IR isn't an independent corporate entity that can make decisions to ensure its prime goal - make money. The IR's prime goal is to provide affordable transportation to the masses even at a loss to IR, since the finmin will give it some money. But long term that wont work since you have to make capital investment to keep up with the times in a lot of areas - infra of all types! Where do you get capital for an entity as large and diverse as the IR without trying to make more money from the users? The IR folllows a policy of subsidising passenger fare using freight, which does indirectly affect the common man in the form of prices of goods they buy. So eventually irrespective of where the money comes from, IR's own coffers, finmin it will come frmo the common man eventually. So i'll have to say that those who can't afford it may have to pony up some more or just try other means of transport!

>> he IR's prime goal is to provide affordable transportation to the masses even at a loss to IR, since the finmin will give it some money

IR is also used for two other purposes by the political class.
[a] setting up new divisons and rail factories in their region to bolster employment and get votes
[b] patronage politics in the supply contracts to IR, which are huge given its size across the country

Rahul saab,

I would take such media reports with a pinch of salt. Media is not above making stuff up to push a story. When I was at Thirunelvelzi recently the big discussion was over the Guage conversion and the increase in price of platform tickets. Couple of demonstrations had been taken to Collectors office as well. When the train to Madurai was converted to an Express from Mail (IR tactic to increase revenue with a nominal speed up of 20 minutes) passengers staged a sit-in. There is definite resistance.

Maybe something like an independent fare regulator, similar to electricity may work better than this annual tamasha. Keep IR break even with GOI spending on capital improvements.

the channel in question is a hardcore pro-mamata one, so much so that the last govt had unofficially imposed a black out on it a number of times by pressuring the cable operators. they have no reason to make things up. trust me to know which is which in WB media.

not to mention that not a single person I talked to, from any walk in life had a bad word to say about the fare increase.

Take a look at the hundreds of opinions here. And this is the internet using crowd.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/poll ... 265876.cms

I havn't had a chance to touch base with my native place but esp. in lower strata there is minimal support for a fare increase of any kind.

Lets keep in mind Mamata was elected by the majority in Bengal for exactly these sorts of policies. I find it hard to believe there is now suddenly 100% support for a fare increase amongst that crowd.

the comments are overwhelmingly in support of the fare hike.

Yes saab! and there is a difference between overwhelming support and 100% support no. If it gets passed and implemented the opposition will get louder and stronger. UPA will then pay for it at the next elections. If support is not unanimous even amongst the internet crowd can you image how starkly different it might be lower down. I'm talking of the NREGA crowd. For which 40% of TN population has registered itself.

BTW a first proposal for a tariff regulatory authority has been made. This can be a long term solution. Hopefully there is a mechanism for public input.

http://www.deccanchronicle.com/channels ... likely-352

This lends credence to the theory that the current parliamentary system with coalition based politics being the norm makes it impossible for reforms to happen in the interests of the larger national good.

I travelled to Bangalore over the weekend and in the AC coaches only one bedsheet was provided as against the earlier 2 apart from the comforter/quilt/rug. The staff employee coolly said that we can raise complaint if we wish to.

We cannot blame the railways here, because you see their first priority is helping the poor people travel. The attendant etc. are too pro-poor and would have higher priorities in helping the poor people . In fact I feel classes like 2 A/C, 3 A/C etc. should be scrapped as it is a "bourgeouis" mode of travel. Let us all have the old wooden bench 3rd Class coaches back.

I have been an ardent rail fain for nearly 20 years now. Guess it is time to slowly switch over . If we have come to a case where even a marginal increase in rail fare cannot be done (that too in a time span of 8 years or so), then we are slowly getting into a mess. We (the nation) would soon have a dinosaur in our hands, which cannot cope up with any new things happening in the world. We would have an obsolete railway, running using obsolete locos and coaches, relying on an obsolete signalling system.

Slowly but steadily there would be increase in people using their four wheelers for commuting. Better roads from NHAI would also reduce the stress and the time duration. Some one can also think about a decently priced motel chains on these routes. Because the middle class would soon think about travelling on their four wheeler at a much more luxurious mode (better than the ill maintained, rat infested unclean A/C or non A/C coach of the railways who are purely focusing on the so called poor people). And for longer journeys, air flights becomes the next option.

The railways should learn from the private auto rickshaw drivers and bigger still; private bus operators in Kerala. Any fuel price hike, these folks go hammer and tongs on the ruling government and demand a price hike in the fares. And more likely it is done. The idea of poor people will now go starving with a meagre hike, would not work with them.

^^

That's why I suggested segregation makes sense. Increase fares and give us world class stations and trains.

MB can keep cattle wagons.

Of course they get to share the same infra like tracks and signaling.

I am sorry but this is so retarded. You need to take Economics 101 class again. The corporate companies are able to cut down their costs because they can. When they cannot, they increase the products' price. If they cannot do either one of them, they go down under.

In this case, IR cannot cut down their costs because they ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DO SO such as cutting employees' wages or cutting back non-essential services that produce no or little revenue. So the only option left is to increase the fares.

By the way, the fares have fallen in the past 10 years due to inflation. Read this very good article here: http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/ ... ine-years/

And going by your standards, IR would go under without massive subsidies by GoI, something that GoI cannot afford in the face of huge deficits. And on top of that, you want food security bill which would even run up the deficit much higher.

so economic sense is jack up the price, regardless. Even if you don't like a corporates decision to increase the price, you have liberty to choose an cheaper one, here you don't have a choice and everyone just has an opinion justifying. I can understand its hard to understand poor people's perspective through computer forums and its just easy to tell them to walk off instead of using IR (a public transportation system), that's sort of attitude always sucks and is exactly the reason why so many people were never alleviated from poverty. God Bless India !

rats the size of cats are there in blr central railway station. feeding along the platforms. perhaps IR can let loose a few CATS on the premises. they will find plenty of rats to pounce on.

Looks like the only way to keep the rising middle class happy at the same time as the poor, is to have greenfield infrastructure built to connect distant cities. If it could be done more than a century ago, it can be repeated but for an entirely different level of technology and associated infrastructure.

If medium distance air travel is working out to be not economical (which pvt or public airlines is making a profit anyway), what choices do we have to improve other modes of transport other than high speed trains with expensive dedicated corridors.

indeed. but good inter city buses of the multi-axle Merc/Volvo kind can also steadily keep to 110-120 range and eat up the miles. good enough for say upto 700km - a 9hr journey if you include a couple stops in between and some bottlenecks. we need more 4 laning and dedicated expways like the one being planned via kolar between Blore and Chennai.

for longer distances upto 2000km , good rail is the only option left after the failure of airlines to be economically viable and rising costs.

Private trains are the soln and private stations too maybe (or atleast pvtly run platforms in big stations). will be opposed strongly by vested interests of all stripes though. or as a interim measure, import/build some 400 LHB Rajdhani std trains quickly and run them on all the express routes and intercity routes on rajdhani fares. why should all roads lead to dilli I ask? allocate some 50 to each zone - people will pay....the intercity ones can be chair cars while exp ones can be sleepers. SCRAP the overpacked 3AC class in them - can be uniformly 2AC and 1AC.

if IR is strongly opposed maybe greenfield stations china style and pvt trains will satisfy rising aspirations of customers.

For anything that requires more than 6-8 hours of sitting in a car or a bus, even if given the best of expressways on par with the rest of the world, the better option is train or air travel. With the kind of mobility and internal migration that is happening in India across all sectors and skill levels, we need more options at different price points.

I don't know if I should laugh or cry at this news piece from TOIlet (Freudian slip)

TMC MP's guard urinates on passenger, pulls out gun

Well, you really need to take Econ 101. There is something called "switching". Buses and planes compete with rail for passengers and trucks and waterways for freight. BTW, the low cost airlines came and hurt IR in the top end 1AC, 2nd AC segment and puts an upper limit on how much you can raise fares there. For eg, I cant imagine too many people taking GT/TN express from Chennai to Delhi like 25/30 years ago and fighting over 1st AC, esp if the fare difference between that and and airplane is less than Rs 500 . Bottomline, this cross subsidy business will not work, unless the bulk of the train is A/C and the fares are reasonable and one or two coaches unreserved and two coaches "sleeper" . The current scheme in a 30 rake train with 3 A/C coaches and some 27 "subsidized coaches", cant work. 3 coaches cannot subsidize 27 coaches packed to the rafters.

Also, since the train fares have been kept so low, there has been a move AWAY from even state transport buses into trains. I noticed this at the railway station here in Bangalore. You would expect the BLR-Mysore passenger train at around 6;00 pm or so to run decently full, but not packed like sardines. Same I noticed in Thanjavur-Chennai, where historically in TN, you could ALWAYS sit and travel in peace in any train, including local passengers.

Now because of the Lalloo, Mamata "no price hike" for a decade, the railways are seriously under priced in comparison to state transport buses and lot of people who would in normal circumstances take the state transport corp bus (esp in TN kind of places), now take the train, hanging out of the footsteps and packed like sardines!

And now consider the other thing. A BLR-Chennai is now Rs 700 or so by Volvo. Recently, I heard of a "ultra luxury service" for Rs 1700 or so, where you get airline like treatment, seats, ambience, becomes a sleeperette, catered food etc and you reach chennai in roughly 5 hours. Now considering, the 2 hr drive to the airport, the 1 hr checkin , 1 hr flight and 1 hr drive from the airport to city in chennai, this will be ultra competitive with the airlines , esp as an early morning / late night service and far cheaper.

Nothing is a monopoly. There are alternatives and switches available and there is no case to persist in irrational pricing for railways.

The problem is that in Bengal and Bihar bulk of eastern India, a road transport system doesn't exist, and the switches are not possible. But in North, West and South, they do.

I do think it is time to break the monolithic Indian railways into 5 or six zonal corporations and operating companies, let them have their own fares, budgets, investment plans and capital spending and independent boards and cater to the regional needs, rather than an overcentralized and highly politicized monolith that is past it's glory days and is now an albatross.

the biggest problem with Indian railways is that even jobs in railway is used as a political tool. Indian railways are overstaffed in many areas..

Spot on. The cheapest bus ticket from BLR-MYS is Rs 98 and the cheapest train ticket is Rs 35.

GD, I for one, am not so confident of pvt players succeeding in here. We have the example of pvt container/freight train operators to look at - as long as IR has skin in the game, it won't allow pvt players to prosper. It will hit below the belt and try everything at its disposal to ensure that its turf is not encroached upon.

The only way to break this would be to go for wholesale pvt greenfield infra - but then the costs and the effort associated with the infra buildout will leave us with another Amtrak like expensive white elephant which would struggle to compete on pricing with IR - it may not be even remotely possible to price the service at levels anywhere close to what IR would charge (of course nobody expects it to be on par).

In many ways, the situation appears similar to the situation in the mid-1990s Indian telecom market - BSNL owned all the legacy infra and had the reach but refused to even attempt to meet rising public aspirations. But then the arrival of mobile telephony was just the kind of tectonic shift that the sector needed back then - what will it be for our Railways?

And vina saar, the more dangerous switching that is about to happen is the one away from IR (and towards road) for freight movement. That is the real golden goose that feeds the entire parasitic passenger transport arm of IR. IIRC, freight earnings subsidised passenger operations to the tune of approx 20,000 crores (!!) last FY. The recent sharp (and sudden) freight rate hike has already forced many companies to reevaluate their logistics and get into the road vs rail debate once again.

The moment short-to-medium haul coal, iron ore and fertilizer movements start switching to road, IR will feel the pain like never before. As if the revenue loss to IR is not enough, the road movements would also hurt the national economy by being slower, more erratic and less environment friendly. It is going to be a lose-lose for everyone, except the transport truck operator lobbies and the corrupt Tax/RTA/police officials sitting at random checkposts across the country.

The latest news report says that even the new RM, has not made a categorical statement that fare hike would get reversed entirely. He also parrots the old minister and says security etc. is a major point. What I heard was that the fare hikes in lower classes (SL and Passenger trains) may be taken back, but in the higher classes the fare hikes would remain.
Deepika (Malayalam)

I partly saw BD’s interview with MB on NDTV yesterday.

MB argued that Rs 2 per km hike will cost someone about Rs 300 extra per month if that commuter is travelling daily from point A to B to A (can’t remember the names given) in WB.

I think MB is right about the cumulative impact it will have on poor passengers.

IMHO, if IR is ever privatised in India then private companies will only run the most profitable routes and GoI will have to subsidise the unprofitable routes. Private companies may also run trains at times when they can get maximum passengers and they may or may not offer train services at other times or could charge extra fares. However, this can be controlled by the government when the contracts are first issued.

Each region can only be controlled by one private sector. One cannot ask several private companies to run railways in one region as this is not physically possible. Unlike telephone companies or supermarkets, there is no scope of multiple private companies fighting fiercely for customers in each region. With lack of direct competition, private companies can hike up fares without making corresponding improvements. There is no guarantee of better trains/stations/safety even if private companies make profits. Private companies are supposed to make profits for their shareholders.

I think GoI needs to diversify money from NREGA and Food Security schemes to improving railways as these schemes do not benefit the poorest. Corruption is eating away most money and poor people continue to suffer. Transferring this money to the allocated budget will bring about lasting improvements in Railway infrastructure which will be visible. A world class Railway system in India will boost our image in the world and further investment in India can be attracted. It will start the virtuous circle!

It is very hard for passenger travel as a whole to stay profitable. It will have to be subsidized on way or another. Rail travel is far far more efficient than bus or passenger car travel WRT to fuel and environment. It is best that the majority take trains and train fares remain far cheaper than bus travel. The question is how to expand, improve and clean up the travel experience. World over privatizing has failed for the simple reason that the vast majority of routes are un-profitable. What might work is the system that got the railways built in India in the first place. A guaranteed 5%-10% return on private investment.

That is one of the ways that India got looted in the first place. This is from my Ex Railway Board member uncle.