High-speed success

The bullet train project needs to buck many trends

At a cost of Rs 1.1 lakh crore and an ambitious completion date of five years, the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train, inaugurated with much fanfare by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last Thursday, will be India’s most challenging transport-related public project to date. The technology complexity is one dimension of the issue – India still does not have a train that can be classified as high speed by international standards. India’s well-established patchy record on project implementation also presents justifiable cause for doubt. The bullet train will run at speeds of over 300 kmph, which is no small leap of faith when the Indian Railways is still struggling to introduce semi-high speed trains – those that run at a top speed of 160 kmph – and our “express” trains run at an average speed of 50 kmph. Taken together with valid misgivings, such as the risky financing model, subject as it is to the rupee-yen exchange rate, and the conventional railway’s grimly deteriorating safety record, the bullet train project will have to buck many trends to fulfill Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitions of reflecting a “new India”.

There is no silver bullet here, so to speak, and the ability to absorb sophisticated technology will be the least of the problems, as the Konkan Railway project or indigenously designed missiles and space missions have proven. But to seamlessly implement a project of immense complexity, laying 508 km of sophisticated high-speed tracks partly on elevated corridors and partly under the sea and acquiring some 825 hectares of land that will displace over 2,700 families, requires more than just scientific and engineering prowess. As a starting point, it will mean establishing an institutional structure that can be empowered to function outside the traditional sarkari apparatus and maximise efficiency. Luckily, the government has a handy model in the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), also partly bankrolled by Japanese institutional finance and technology partnership, on which to predicate the bullet train project. Notwithstanding some glitches, such as the failure of the private-public participation venture for the airport link and some faulty construction, the Delhi Metro has attracted widespread approbation not just for timely completion but for achieving the “hygiene” factors – safety, cleanliness and punctuality – that Western or south-east Asian cities take for granted. In a country famed for its rundown urban transport systems, the very visible world-class quality of the Delhi Metro has encouraged several other cities to opt for similar models.

DMRC, thus, has become a consultant in its own right, now advising metro projects both in India and abroad (Jakarta and Dhaka being two of them). One critical and often overlooked reason for DMRC’s success is that E Sreedharan, Delhi Metro’s moving force, stipulated that he be given a free hand and shielded from political interference as preconditions for meeting project targets. It is fair to say that the political dispensation largely honoured those terms. If New Delhi is able to empower the executors of the bullet train project in a similar manner, it, too, could become a showcase project for India and prove the doubters wrong.