The merger of cadres is very ill conceived and will be counter productive

It is impractical to merge technical and non technical services as Interoperability is not feasible

Sunil Kumar Agrawal*

The merger of all departments is based on a flawed concept of departmentalism. In fact at the cutting edge level of railway working in Divisions and even in Zonal level, there is hardly any such fissures and that is why Railways run smoothly.

The problem of departmentalism is rampant at the Railway Board’s level where a huge bureaucracy with no work zealously work to further their department ‘s interests.

The problem has really become acute within Engineering departments where huge stakes are involved while garnering maximum budgetary allocations and new projects.

Consequently huge lobbying with the political establishment is common place.

This results in mis-allocation of meagre resources, induction of unimportant and useless technology.

Additionally, the industry plays ball with the Railway Board bureaucracy to further their interests. More budget means more kickbacks as well as more posts for the department.

Indian Railway Traffic Service (IRTS) which is responsible for finally deliver the railway output is either bypassed or overruled.

The merger of cadres is therefore very ill conceived and will be counter productive.
Technology has become so complex that a civil engineer cannot do a electronic signalling job.

Domain knowledge is essential for railway working in view of very specialised and technical nature of the job.

It is impractical to merge technical and non technical services as Interoperability is not feasible. Several committees in the past have recommended two groups of combined services viz technical and non technical. This at least makes some sense although it is felt that this will also not work in view of complexities of each departments.

Extremely different mindset’s and attitude is required for technical jobs (where primacy is on expenditure) as against non technical like IRTS where the entire focus is on maximising earnings.

*Writer is a former IRTS officer and Rtd. AM/Comml. Railway Board, who has also worked earlier as DRM/NGP, CCM/SECR, COM/SCR. Views are personal.