Modi Sarkar@2: Railways is out of ICU, but still needs care, feels Suresh Prabhu

Sunday ET catches up with Suresh Prabhu, Union Minister for Railways for his views on two years of the Modi government.

On the ministry’s achievements
The biggest sense of satisfaction for me is that the railways is back in focus. Earlier people used to give only negative feedback on the Indian Railways. But commuters are now talking about a lot of positive things. Things are changing fast. We get regular feedback through social media and other means, much faster. The corporate sector, including global companies, is getting excited about the way the Railways has changed itself. After all, we are spending a lot of resources on infrastructure creation such as building broad gauge, eliminating unmanned crossings, etc. We are increasing the speed of trains and we are also increasing revenues from non-fare segments (such as advertisements). The capacity is being augmented. All those have led to one thing — positivity. But we can’t expect a patient coming out of the ICU to run immediately. Yes, the Railways is out of the ICU now, and it has started walking. But it still needs a lot of care and attention.

On the targets
My budget has given a clear roadmap for the future of the Indian Railways. It is a huge organisation where we have to manage a number of things simultaneously. This is an organisation of 1.4 million people. I have to take care of them. But most of the time I have been firefighting. And what we have achieved is amid that firefighting. In hindsight, yes, we could have done better in some areas. But our targets, as clearly mentioned in the last two rail budgets, have remained intact.

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On innovation
We have encouraged innovation on all fronts. People think innovation is only about a new technology but innovation in our setup drives efficiency. In financing, we innovated on raising resources from nonconventional sources to fund infrastructure growth. In execution, we innovated to use drones for project monitoring, and IT dashboards for performance management. Even something like delegating powers to functional levels has been an innovation that has led to a significant reduction in approval cycles. And it doesn’t end here. We will continue to innovate, for example, to develop new products for customers in Tejas trains or UDAY trains.

On ranking the NDA government
I will give 10 out of 10 to the government, considering that the situation two years ago was really bad. Just compare the Indian economy with the world economy in 2014, and do the comparison now. The Indian economy today is doing well when China is slowing down, Japan is in recession, Europe and the US are in trouble, and Latin America is in bad shape.

On a Super PMO
The prime minister is available virtually 24x7 for any advice that his ministers need. There is a wrong impression that he bulldozes (his ministers). Instead, he is highly supportive. He encourages us to work as one team.

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