Indian Railways is plagued by so many problems at time, that concentrating on just 1 problem will let the other problems grow out of control. Head of KayaKalp council should be a reputed person (Like Mr ESreedharan) having good understanding of railways while members of non-railway but relevant fields should be there.
Bowing down to union muscle means there will be no appreciable reforms. First impact of any reform shall be on the employees of Indian Railways. Reforms means changes in the ways of day to day working, and it will be Rly workers who will be driven out of comfort zones first.
Govt....
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has to decide, whether it would shun the much needed reforms and allow the naturally most efficient mode of transport (IRlys) to remain inefficient & rot. The fallout will be the majority of freight & passenger traffic shall continue to be carried by road and air which are much more energy intensive, costly, more polluting than movement by Rail. This will be causing lot of damage to the economy of nation & inconvenience to 130 crore people of India.
Many questions arise at this juncture-
Should the polluting Road & air travel should be allowed to replace energy efficient & environment friendly rail travel ?
Should the Road ways & airlines be allowed to continue carry the traffic inefficiently, much to the detriment of Indian economy, which should be carried efficiently by Rlys ?
Should IRlys be allowed to work with slow decision making, continuing with age old organization structure & work methods instead of adopting the latest management & work practices in consonance with today’s technological development?
Should the unions be allowed to keep IRlys & nation (130 crore citizens of india) to ransom for their petty interests??
The share of freight traffic of IRlys has fallen from about 90% at the time of independence to around 30-35% today and is continuously falling similar is fate of passenger traffic. The role played by IRlys in the National economy is continuously shrinking. At this rate, just like Pakistan Railways, IRlys shall be completely marginalized and isolated from Indian economy.
The trucks, buses, cars and aero planes have snatched the role historically played by Indian railways. Truck/bus/aero plane operators had kept pace with the technological developments and had undergone sea change with changing times. On the other hand, the IRlys is too slow to change and still sticking to age old working practices and organization.
No person, no organization, no country is more powerful than the greatest entity known to us i.e. time. Those who keep pace with time survive & thrive and those who do not change are doomed to die. IRlys is a huge organization and it is dying a very slow death. Aged union leaders may not fore-see such a bad condition of their beloved organization, but the young employees in IRlys may actually see this one day.

Bro the changes means the changes in the ways of working & procedures so as to bring in efficiency in I Rlys so that it could compete successfully with i.e. Road ways and airlines. The growth of traffic of the other two modes had been phenomenal because of the much more efficient ways of working of private sector Road & Airline operators. Same is case of ports and shipping. The nationalized Major ports are growing at slow pace and the private operators like Mundra, Pipavav age growing at much faster pace. The silver line is the message that if the Govt organizations change their ways of working in consonance with time, the question of inefficiency & privatization does not arise at all. Else the privatization is inevitable, only it is matter of time. Just the way, circumstances (precarious financial condition, no foreign exchange reserves, I.Govt at verge of becoming a financial...
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defaulter) forced opening up of Indian Economy in 1991, one day the circumstances (very poor financial condition-at verge of bankruptcy)shall force privatization of I Rlys which will be much more brutal and troublesome than taking planned and voluntary steps to improve efficiency and be abreast of time.
Mr. E.Sreedharan is just an option and his views very rightly lay more emphasis on improvement of efficiency of existing network than bringing in Bullet train. But he is not against bringing bullet train in India altogether. If this govt is working at superfast speed than their previous govts, then there is nothing wrong. The kind of loan we are getting is the main reason for going for BT project, the rate of return is low but the economic rate of return to the Indian economy is estimated at decent 12% pa. Japan is giving super concessional loan out of competition to promote its BT technology over the Chinese BT technology. The same loan is not available for projects on the conventional Rly network.
Dedicated freight corridors, Large scale doublings, New station projects, wide spread use of IT in railway operation etc are the steps being taken to improve the standards of IR, which will start bearing results after commissioning. Rate of commissioning of BG line has increased from about 4.5 km/day to about 7km/day and is planned to increase to 19kms/day in 3-4 years.
Rly infrastructure projects are very capital intensive and have very lonf gestation periods, hence are to be planned decades in advance. Bullet train shall most probably take 8-10 years going through the phases of initial proposal to various technical/ traffic/ commercial studies & surveys, construction, commissioning. By then, the country shall need BT much more than it is now. Nobody can say about the exact impact of BTs after commissioning with surety. It depends upon many factors like:
(1) Timely (quick) completion of project/ begininning of BT operation
(2) Cost effective Manufacture of Bullet train rakes, signaling/traction/track material in India with maximum possible indigenization.
(3) High rate of growth of India, so that trade and commerce expand rapidly thereby arising of need of BT
(4) Percolation of the above benefits to people, so that the middle & lower class people too have high purchasing power ans adequate disposable income. Else there will not be enough passengers in high income group to make BT project viable
(5) Better management of non-fare revenues shall contribute significantly to success of BT project.
(6) How fast we absorb the BT technology and get benefited on large scale though implement of its good points through out the rest of IR network.