Railways’ poor safety record and fiscal health

Five people died in a train collision in Jharkhand yesterday – adding to the long list of tragic accidents under the watch of the Trinamool Congress controlled railway ministry. Officials say rail mishaps have killed around 1,220 people over the last five years. While the cause of the latest tragedy is being probed, it’s to be asked if safety has become a casualty of the national transporter’s poor management and financial shape.

Consider that railway minister Dinesh Trivedi admits the Railways may see a deficit budget. Yet, instead of planning to reduce passenger fare subsidies of over Rs 15,000 crore, he’s sought a morally hazardous government bailout. This contradicts his call sometime ago for a dynamic fare policy to improve earnings that can help modernise the Railways.

Note that the Directorate General of Civil Aviation only recently stressed the link between airlines’ fiscal health and ability to meet safety standards. No wonder even railway unions urge fare rationalisation to avoid an Air India-like fiscal scenario.

Trivedi did back a fare-restructuring scheme that could have raised additional revenue of Rs 2,500 crore. But his efforts to reform the passenger fare structure – unchanged since 2002 – were reportedly stymied by Mamata Banerjee, who still seems to have the final populist say on railway affairs.

Subsidy on passenger services has slowed internal resource generation, which can’t but mean slashed spending on modernisation and tech-aided safety upgrade. Tellingly, while safety-related posts remain vacant, no move is made to trim the Railways’ gargantuan workforce.

The only way out of the mess is to boost revenues by setting up an independent regulator for rationalising passenger tariffs and freight rates, increasing investments via more PPP projects and spinning off all non-core activities. The more political meddling there is in the running of Indian Railways, the more it’ll go off track.