Deadly professional dishonesty and misconduct that are ruining Indian Railways

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At stake is the economic development, national defense and integration, and mobility of 95% of the Indians who can’t afford to travel by car or airplane

Alok Kumar Verma, Indian Railway Service of Engineers (IRSE) retd., alumnus IIT/KGP and IIT/Delhi

The deadly #Balasore accident a month ago, the recent attempts to build more lines on Standard Gauge, and the critical situation on the Kashmir Rail Link and the other six projects in the Himalayas prompt me to write this.

  1. Decisions to build the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train line and the #KeralaSilverline on Standard Gauge, decisions to build a network dedicated to heavy haul (longer, heavier, and larger) trains, approval of deeply flawed alignments for lines in the Himalayas, and the malpractices that are causing deadly #Train accidents that claim hundreds of lives: The underlying cause of all these is the professional #dishonesty and #misconduct that has spread its tentacles all through the #IndianRailways setup, presided over by the Railway Board.

Indian Railways is facing a terminal decline, reflected in the loss of market share, the choked arteries of this lifeline, stagnant speed, and subpar #safety and #punctuality performance.

  1. I have been observing this trait of #IndianRailways closely for the past twenty years; I had to suffer vindictive actions when I opposed this trait in 2007-16, and I have been writing about this to spread awareness of the deadly consequences of decisions taken as a direct outcome of these unethical practices since my retirement from #IndianRailways six years ago.
  2. Let us look at each of the above-mentioned cases in chronological order. I will keep this short and only mention the most important information and events. For more information, read the articles I and others have written, some of which have appeared in the national media, as well as my letters to the relevant #authorities and #Twitter posts.

Deeply flawed alignments and feasibility reports for lines in the Himalayas:

  1. These were first prepared in 1997-2002 for the #KashmirRailLink project to connect #Katra with #Banihal across the highly landslide-prone part of the Himalayas, called The #Lesser_Himalayas, without carrying out any of the essential ground surveys to assess whether the massive #bridges, #tunnels, and #cuttings this alignment required for building the broad gauge line would be feasible, stable, and safe. This is a veritable violation of the relevant engineering and financial codes of practice of the Indian Railways.
  2. This alignment came under scrutiny in 2007-10, when I submitted a report that outlined the flaws and presented an alternative alignment based on a new methodology different from the conventional approach of building lines on the slopes. #Construction was suspended in 2008, and a review ensued, but the review was scuttled by top railway officials, including two members of the Railway Board.
  3. The #CAG, the #PAC, two expert committees, and the Delhi HC then looked into the matter of scuttling the review of alignment. Despite scathing indictments of #RailwayBoard by these authorities, the #Board has continued construction of the line, pouring in more than INR 35,000 crore on a line that traverses a meager 50-kilometer stretch of mountains.
  4. While all this was happening (2007-2016), Railway Board approved alignments for six other lines in this landslide-prone region of the Himalayas in Uttarakhand and the #NorthEast in exactly the same fashion. None of the projects have been completed yet, while for the past seven years #RailwayBoard has kept promising early completion of these strategically vital lines (each under a National Project) only to further extend the target date of completion.

Network of dedicated freight lines to run heavy haul trains:

  1. Taking a global perspective, it was a highly questionable decision of the #RailwayBoard in 2005 to build two such lines, called the Eastern DFC and the Western #DFC, as part of a nationwide network of such lines that would be built in the coming years. Despite this extremely unusual type of rail network, no study was done to examine whether a dedicated network of heavy haul freight lines should be built or a network of dedicated passenger lines for higher speed and improved safety and punctuality performance. In fact, #RailwayBoard appointed an internal committee to examine this issue, but Before the committee could complete its deliberations, the #Board took the decision to build the #DFCs.
  2. Initially planned to be completed in just 3 to 5 years, these two lines are far from completion even after seventeen years, while congestion on the existing trunk routes has reached alarming proportions since 2012.

The decisions to build the 300-350 kmph Mumbai-Ahmedabad ultra-high-speed (bullet train) line and the plans for the 200-250 kmph Kerala Silverline and numerous other lines on the foreign (British) Standard gauge.

  1. In 2015, #RailwayBoard took the decision to build India’s first #BulletTrain line from #Mumbai to #Ahmedabad in a completely unscientific and arbitrary manner. Not just this, but soon the country was confronted with plans to build at least ten more such lines in the country, involving the expenditure of mind-boggling sums of public money. These lines cost about twelve times more than a normal 130 kmph line and about six times more than the cost of a slower but more versatile 200-250 kmph high-speed line.
  2. Scientifically and technically, there is no reason why the Bullet Train lines can’t be built on Broad Gauge. Because of the dominant flat terrain of alluvial soils in India, the cost of construction of a SG line would also be much higher compared to a BG line for the same speed because SG is significantly narrower than BG. Further, because of a different gauge, there would be no interoperability with the existing broad gauge network, which would result in a whole lot of complications, such as gross underutilization of capacity.
  3. Furthermore, the bullet train lines serve a very limited demand for daytime intercity business commutes while offering not much of a saving in journey time, higher capacity, or reduced expenditures on operation and maintenance compared to a 200-250 kmph line.
  4. This is possibly the worst decision ever in the history of IR because adoption of a new gauge would have so many wide-ranging and far-reaching adverse consequences.

Malpractices and archaic norms in the operations and maintenance of the IR network

  1. This is a lengthy list of items, many of which have been addressed in the CAG’s two most recent reports on accidents and punctuality. The list includes: too many bottlenecks in the network at the critical junctions, a very high rate of asset failures (including rail fractures and signal and interlocking failures); a tendency to hide asset failures, underpowering of trains, denial of traffic blocks for safety inspections and critical maintenance, large differences in speeds of groups of trains, too many stops of long distance trains, slow commuter trains on the trunk lines in the peak hours under the main junctions, underpowering of trains, too many closely spaced crossing stations, faulty timetabling, etc.

Clearly, the #RailwayBoard is a failed organization that has generated a host of malpractices in the past two decades that affect the present and future of rail transport, the mode that is most suited for India considering its geography, terrain, and population.

Also read: “The #VandeBharat fiasco and the #choked #arteries of the nation’s #lifeline!”