Business

Bullet To The Trains

Outsourcing: the very palliative for our railways is turning its bane

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Bullet To The Trains
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Of A Disaster Foretold?

  • Traveller feedback shows outsourcing of ticketing, cleanliness, meals to pvt firms hasn’t improved travel experience
  • Rail manufacturing and repair—of wheels, coaches and locomotives—being handed over to contractors
  • Rail authorities feel rightsizing will make operations more efficient
  • Workers unhappy, feel it is leaving the system open to security risks

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Privatisation is the pill the government has prescribed for all the ills of the Indian Railways. With a new, savvy minister in charge, the country’s lifeline is expected to be injected a stiff dose of private investment, FDI and a host of public-private partnerships. How else will the government realise its objective of introducing bullet trains and having  dedicated freight corridors in the country? The irony is that rampant outsourcing to private players has created a deep-rooted cult­ure of corruption in the railways. Suresh Prabhu will have a tough time stemming the rot.

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Railway employees argue that the private sector, not Indian Railways, is to blame for the shoddy state of most trains, the pathetic food served, the rodents and cockroaches that travel free in AC coa­ches, the torn bedding provided to the AC coach/Rajdhani passengers. From bed linen to catering to cleanliness of platforms, stations and running trains, all have been outsourced by the irctc. Even ticketing has been outsourced recently, adding to the cost of the passenger (tho­ugh the railways will get only one-fourth of the Rs 30 the private vendor charges for each passenger availing their services).

Railway workers are expressing concern that moving beyond passenger amenities, the management has started outsourcing services related to the manufacture and maintenance of the rolling stock and other infrastructure having a bearing on operations, including safety and security. Former rail board member Shanti Narain says the procurement process in Indian Railways is completely flawed. “It has destroyed the culture of quality,” he says. “Super­vision has to be intensified if outsourcing is being done. There should be penal cla­u­ses and provision for cancelling contracts.”

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Saying that outsourcing is nothing new, Railway Board chairman Arunendra Kumar points out that even 50 years back, the railways was floating tenders for laying of tracks. In the last 5-6 years, it went up because of delays in recruitment. “Out­sourcing had gone up because expectations had gone up. We invited people who could do the job faster, bec­ause if you see, financially, government labour is quite expensive. But the charge that you are taking my job and giving it to a private contractor is completely incorrect,” says the rail board chairman in defence.

While Kumar denies that any major engineering work has been outsourced, reports from major railway manufacturing and maintenance units point otherwise. Even more incredibly, outsourced manufacturing and maintenance work in some cases is happening within the railway workshops, say workers and union leaders. “Regular work is being outsour­ced despite the fact that the rail board decided that no permanent work is to be outsourced. It started 7-8 years back during Mamata Banerjee’s tenure. There is no system of open tender. Some of the outsourced work is done within the factory, just outside it or in its vicinity,” says Manjeet Singh, divisional president of the Jagadhri railway workshop.

Shiva Gopal Mishra, general secretary of the All India Railwaymen’s Federation, says technical staff is facing two basic problems. One is lack of quality material supply in adequate quantities well in time and the second is of contractors using rail workshop facilities for outsourced work, whether at Chittaranjan Locomotive Works, the Integral Coach Factory in Chennai, Rail Coach Factory in Kapurthala or Diesel Locomotive Works, Varanasi. “The contractors are utilising our machines and space. The quality of our work is suffering as their workers are not trained,” says Mishra.

ICF Chennai and RCF Kapurthala are the two main coach producing units of the railways, together supplying around 3,500 coaches a year, far short of the country’s requirement for 10,000-odd coaches. “Though the government has approved the proposal for setting up new plants, they have not committed to fund allocation through budgets. Hence railway administration has no other option but to find ways and means for enhancing production targets,” says M. Shanmugam, central president, Indian Railways Tech­nical Supervisors Association. “One of the proposals is to outsource some of the coaches to meet the demand. Our grouse is not against outsourcing in total, but the hasty manner in which it’s done by certain officials, and erroneous decisions.” One such decision, he says, was when the rail board compel­led ICF to hand over the entire set of drawings and designs to some inexperienced private sector companies and asked them to help with the technical knowhow.

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The plan to set up two locomotive pla­nts on PPP basis in Bihar—at Madhepura and Mar­howrah in Saran district—is also creating some unease among railwaymen as they fear that with the assured offtake clause provided by the railways, it would further cut down their workload.

The state of the railways is such that shortage of staff and rolling stock has led to wagons and coaches being sent for overhaul after 18 months instead of the mandated 12. Several other safety features are being given a go-by, like the inspection of rail tracks on a daily basis. Dr M. Raghavaiah, general secretary, Nati­onal Federation of Indian Railway­men, faults the rail board for “sitting over files, including tender finalisation” and the trend of not ensuring quality supplies through standardised sources. Today instead of a gangman travelling eight km every day to inspect lines, a machine is taking over. And since the machine is cos­tly, inspections are spaced out over seve­ral months. The railwaymen warn of an imminent safety disaster as privatisation makes inroads sans accountability.

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