Union Budget 2024: Capital expenditure support continues to be sustained

A balanced Budget, focused on national priorities, continues to support the growth of rail infrastructure as already spelled out in the interim Budget 2024-25.
 

Never in the history of India has the finance ministry been so generous towards Railways than under the present government. Including the outlay for Railways, announced in the Regular Budget on Tuesday, the cumulative Gross Budgetary Support across three consecutive years from 2022-23 to 2024-25 stood at a whopping Rs 6.5 trillion.
 

When the outlays granted to Railways are unusually large, expectations of extracting larger outcomes too will soar. Outcomes so far are good, visible, and impactful.

Top on the list of good results is IR’s freight loading almost touching 1.6 billion tonnes. China tops the global rail freight market ranking with 3 billion tonnes.

American Railroads and Indian Railways are vying for number two ranking. Available track capacities and notoriously low-payload casnub bogies-mounted wagons were put to optimal use. Coming to the annual number of rail passenger journeys sold, while the upper-class rail tickets sold are trailing behind domestic airlines, Indian Railways are ranked number two in the global rail passenger market, behind Japan. However, it is disconcerting that the laudable outcomes are creating some seriously formidable problems too for the Indian Railways.

When a rail administration dares to be adventurous by mixing passenger business train services of such magnitude with an equally gigantic rail freight trains business, on a comparatively smaller 70,000 kilometre time-worn rail track system, many things can go wrong. Some of the safety breaches on the tracks are warning symptoms. A clogged network leaves very little repairs and maintenance time.

True, India under the present government added 3,000 kms of Dedicated Freight Corridor, substantial patch doubling, quadrupling and track renewals.

The worry is, how long can a 70,000-km route network sustain, when its capacities get brutally overstretched with excessive demands of a booming freight business aiming to reach 3 billion tonnes and an equally booming demand for rail passenger services.

The problems are more complex. Of the existing 70,000 route km of track, almost 50,000 km were built between 1870 and 1945, mostly with greedy private investors’ money, on weak sub grades, typical of any rail line built with disdainfully frugal specifications by any colonial regime. The only solution is to accelerate the separation of passenger and freight businesses with separate track systems.

In other words, the existing frei­ght dominated at-grade track systems built by a colonial government needs to be upgraded, starting from weak su­bgrade upw­ards.

This is what South African Railways did when it upgraded 1067 mm metre gauge plus tracks to move 100 tonne payload wagons. For passenger services, elevated track systems may be preferred where passenger business is thriving. It is easier to introduce and system integrate modern signalling on these newly built elevated tracks.

Quite evidently, the generous Budget outlays need serious prioritisation for meeting the country’s expectations.

The writer is former financial commissioner, Railways