Interesting report. On the one hand IR employees doing household jobs of their bosses, and on the other hand there goes a report that several lacs of posts, mostly related to safety are lying vacant in IR. If these posts are filled, then the Pay-Allowance-Pension expenses of IR shall shoot up to about 85% of total revenue of IR (from current figure of about 75%). Forget about the safety of running trains, IR shall not be in a position to run all the trains. About 50% of trains shall be cancelled any day due to no fuel available, or no spares available and IR shall default on loan repayments.(some what like Pak Rly)
Did the reporters took the pains to study that...
more... how old are the norms of the so called vacancies? Most probably these norms should be outdated. It is quite possible that the number of vacancies which were calculated when the IR technology/operation was totally manual and rudimentary, without any automation and computerisation. If the work practices using the latest practices using optimal use of technological developments in all the spheres of working in IR are formulated, the staff requirement may be much lesser than the current staff. Safety can not be over seen by staff posted for safety. Real safety has to be imbibed in the habit and work culture of each employee. If every person does the job as per the laid down procedures with safety of self, colleagues, and paxs in mind, there is no need to keep an army of safety officers/ workers.
And if there is genuinely heavy shortage of employees, then the senior officials are really the kings, because even most of the the owners of industries give priority to the production and refrain from the luxury of sending their industrial workers at their homes for doing household jobs. It seems, IR has still not fully come out of the British Raj where the senior officials used to be whites. As there was no value of lives of Indians before their luxuries. Continuance of British Raj Practice of providing luxurious saloons for officials shows not much has changed.
A rethinking may be done in the selection process of top officials through UPSC. UPSC is generalist in the sense that it does not differentiate between a science/ commerce/ arts graduate. Today is time of specialisation, commercial staffs should be a specialist MBA in marketing and related disciplines. For example, Clearing UPSC exam cannot make a art graduate very good at marketing job.
It is time to create and recruit railway employees who can do multi tasking. IR may collaborate with top universities to develop syllabus as per the need of IR and IR may select candidates (only those who have a certain minimum level of desired skills) through campus interviews.
IR is a technical organisation and is basically doing construction/operation/maintenance of train/track/other physical assets. Finance, personnel, marketing etc are essential functions associated with the train operation. It would be in the interest of IR to have employees who have multidisciplinary education & training. A technical staff travelling on train for example to maintain ac and other faults is usually free and work only when there is a break down. He can very well do ticket checking/ over see cleaning in normal time and attend to break downs when needed, for which IR currently have commercial staff like TTE. There is a simple rule which applies to any business organisation, if you pay your employees a very handsome salary/perks/pension etc, you have to make optimum use out of them, else employee cost shall eat the organisation. This exactly is the cause of worry for IR. So many departments and extreme tussles between them have badly damaged the financial condition of IR.
A very interesting multiple choice question arise in this context
Is IR:
(1) a fiefdom of RM
(2) a fiefdom of Ruling party
(3) a fiefdom of IR Officials
(4) a fiefdom of worker's union leaders
(5) an enterprise of government of India
Note: One or more or none of the above alternatives may be correct. Above could be an interesting question for polling.
