First decide whether Indian Railways is a govt deptt or a profit making entity?

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If Railways is a profit making entity, government has no business being in Railways’ business

Trade Unions were required in the era when discretion of management threatened well-being of labour

RDSO is the real white elephant and the elephant in the room. Whatever they touch becomes Gold

If government department-

Take example of Army

Clear cut differentiation between operations/management/strategy/line and engineering/support/infra/staff & maintenance

The Recruitment is through NDA/CDS for Line and through Engineering Service Exam for Staff.

If it’s a profit making entity-

Take example of Oil Marketing companies e.g. BPCL

There is Clear cut differentiation between operations/management/strategy/management and engineering/support/maintenance/infra/technical

The recruitment for mgmt is through Management Trainee route and for technical is through Graduate Engineer Trainee route.

In case of BPCL the strategic business units (SBUs) were devised by McKinsey to being more efficiency.

Same functional departments are seen in Railway. But the difference is that there is deep seated grudge in the technical departments recruited through Engineering Service exam and on paper everyone is same.

So people see a window of opportunity where they can game the system and create more and more avenues for them to expand, cutting into the domains of others.

In army as well as corporate entities modes of recruitment and subsequent training decide what work will be done by whom.

There are departments, but there is no menace called departmentalism. Because everyone is comfortable in their own skin and everyone clearly knows who is the boss.

There are some elephants in the room (some of which also happen to be white elephants) which no one seems interested to answer.

Trade Unions: Trade Unions were required in the era when discretion of management threatened well-being of labour.

Today things have changed drastically. There is no need for so many tortuous rules for transfer-postings. Personnel officers need not sit like middlemen brokering on behalf of Union on some occasions and on behalf of DRMs on some other.

Corporatization: This stems from the first question. If Railways is a profit making entity, government has no business being in Railways business. It should be corporatized.

Recruitment from Engineering service and civil service should stop and campus recruitment and other modes used by PSUs should be adopted.

But then Railways and its officers should not be expected to talk to state authorities on equal terms on various issues. Joint secretaries at ministry level should be doing that work.

Railway Ministry should be merged with surface transport ministry and Indian Railways should be a PSU of the combined ministry. Slowly hiving off some parts of the PSU may be considered.

At least competition should be brought in wagon/coach purchase and other procurement. Even if corporatization occurs, technical departments will play second fiddle to the marketing, Operations, strategy arms and they should choose their careers wisely.

It is not in the interest of the organization to first join a department which you don’t like and then undercut the other department which you think is better, but which you could not join in the first place due to tougher recruitment process.

RDSO: RDSO is the real white elephant and the elephant in the room. Whatever they touch becomes Gold. The proverbial ‘Midas touch’. RDSO has stunted vendor growth. Inflated procurement price of so many equipment.

RPF: If Railways is a commercial making entity about to be corporatized, RPF should be merged with CISF.

(Published as received)