Lalu's confidant to wite a book on railways' turnaround story

NEW DELHI: After turning around Indian Railways, he is now working on a book.

A 1982 batch IAS officer, Sudhir Kumar, currently OSD to railway minister Lalu Prasad, is writing a book tracing the story of how the change in railways from a loss-making entity to one generating a surplus was ushered in without any burden on the people.

Sudhir Kumar is writing this book along with a Columbia University research scholar, Shagun Mehrotra, with a view to documenting a case study on how the railways was "transformed from near bankruptcy to one creating a surplus" without increasing fares, freight charges, or recourse to privatisation, disinvestment or downsizing.

In fact, the proposed title of the book is, "Bankruptcy to Billions: How the Indian Railways transformed in four years."

The book, which is likely to be released in September, seeks to explode many myths. "You have to question old beliefs and past assumptions," Sudhir Kumar said in an exclusive chat with TOI on Saturday.

He said: "The theme of the book is that reforms need not be a painful process. You can do well in ���Shining India��� by doing good to ���Suffering India���."

He said the first few chapters of the book would deal with the all round scepticism when Prasad spelt out his priorities in his first rail budget 2004-05 since railways had no money to even replace its over-aging assets.
It would then go on to trace how the turnaround was slowly achieved.

Today, the railways have a cash surplus of more than $6 billion, a fact that has surprised many at how fast a public enterprise can rise from the ashes. The book will highlight the management strategy that optimised the functioning of this complex institution on its apolitical variables.

"The core strategy can be summarised in three words, each worth $2 billion in surplus: faster, longer and heavier trains. The book unpacks each of these as well as several other detailed strategies of the transformation," the preface of the book states.

"There was this widespread notion that as a public utility, its dominant goal cannot be to make money. In fact, the opposite is true. You cannot serve society unless you are productive and profitable," Sudhir contends.

Courtesy: www.timesofindia.com