Bullet trains: Should India be careful about spending as much as Rs 60,000 crore on the project? Yes its feasible .......////// Two days after the rail budget, Satish Agnihotri, CMD, Rail Vikas Nigam, the PSU that oversees the Indian Railways infrastructure projects, invited four retired rail engineersBSE -4.99 % for lunch. The food was simple — rice, roti and dal. But what the five men were about to discuss was complex: how to build Indias first bullet train. For an organization that is synonymous with sluggish trains, bullet trains are nothing short of a leap into the future for the Indian Railways. Bullet trains, or high-speed trains, are billed as the Railways dream project. But they might as well be Prime Minister Narendra Modis too, given the frequency with which he promised to overhaul Indias rail infrastructure on the lines of Japan during the election campaign. So the sense of urgency that has taken over Agnihotris office located in New Delhis Bhikaji Cama Place since the government recently approved the high-speed rail corridor project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, worth Rs 60,000 crore, is to be expected. Agnihotri is also chairman of High Speed Rail Corporation of India (HSRC), which is tasked with executing the project. One of Agnihotris four guests was a man named Rajiv Ranjan Jaruhar who retired as member (engineering) of Railway Board in 2007. Jaruhar calls the bullet train a mighty project with no parallel. The institution handling the high speed rail project must have an entirely different work culture, paradigm and philosophy, he says. In other words, the Railways in its present form will be unable to execute the project. That is only one of the many challenges. Arunendra Kumar, chairman of Railway Board, the highest decision-making body of the railways, says technology adopted in high-speed rail is alien to Indias railway engineers. Nevertheless, the process of training over 300 rail men will begin this year itself. Yes, we have to start afresh. HSRC will have a corporate structure and independence, as private sector players as well as multilateral agencies are more comfortable with such a structure, says Kumar. There is one factor that bodes well for the project — the new governments intent. Earlier we were told: lets study the feasibility. Now the direction is: lets do it, Kumar says. Indeed, bullet trains as an idea is hardly new to India — as early as 2007-08, Lalu Prasad as rail minister envisaged trains running at 300-350 km an hour— but nothing came of it. But this time there is a change in attitude thanks to the NDA government getting a clear mandate, according to Kumar.
Posted on: Mon, 14 Jul 2014 05:08:04 +0000
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