Yet another committee

Is government serious on railways reform?

It is unfortunate that over three months after the presentation of the railway Budget, which expressed the need to restructure the railway board, a committee has been set up to suggest how the board and the ministry can be reorganised. The committee might take some more months to come up with fresh ideas, and thereafter the government will surely take a few more months to examine and pronounce on the recommendations. Assuming something of substance is accepted, it may be a year, if not more, for action to be taken on the recommendations. Thus, a lot of time will have gone before any concrete results can be expected.

One task for the committee is to estimate the railways' financial needs and suggest ways of raising resources. Now, the financial needs - investments that need to be made - have already been calculated many times. What is needed is to change the way the organisation is managed. Once investors see commercial viability clearly ahead, there will be no dearth of resources. The minister has himself in his Budget speech quoted an unnamed person saying that it is unheard of for a monopoly with a billion customers and 100 per cent sale on advance payments to be starved of funds. The solution is crystal clear - set the management right and resources will follow. The question of staffing should also be examined, including lateral induction from the private sector. Experts from airlines could fix fares for reserved seats dynamically, minute by minute; Information technology experts could ensure railways no longer take days to trace individual wagons when entire bus fleets are being tracked minute by minute. Sadly, there is no mention of suggesting steps for ending "departmentalism", the bane of the railways, by merging cadres and forming a single railway service.

What is inexplicable is why the government needs yet another committee to say what needs doing. There is a formidable array of reports prepared by teams headed by well-known names and institutions, such as Prakash Tandon, McKinsey and Company, Rakesh Mohan, Anil Kakodkar and Sam Pitroda (not to speak of the railways' own status and vision reports), from 1994 till 2012, all of which have already addressed these questions and come to broadly similar conclusions. The latest decision creates the feeling that the government has taken recourse to a time-tested device - when in doubt or unable to act, appoint a committee.

This inability to decide is apparent from the terms of reference of the committee. One of those is to "examine and suggest modalities" for setting up the Rail Tariff Authority, which has already received Cabinet approval. The only key issue that remains is whether the recommendations of the tariff authority will be advisory or mandatory. The railways establishment, made up of senior officials and the political executive of the day, has expectedly opposed any arrangement where it does not have the last word on tariffs. The government has to take a call on this - whether to continue with business as usual or take tariff fixing, a commercial decision, out of the uncertainties of the political exigencies of the day. It is meaningless to seek "recommendations" on this from yet another committee, since the issue is both simple and well understood already.