A Minister On Fast Track

Hitting the ground running, new railway minister Suresh Prabhu has made it clear that he is no pushover like his predecessor D.V. Sadananda Gowda. Given his past experience as minister of environment and power, Prabhu has decided to deploy the carrot-and-stick policy to hasten project implementation, with two per cent incentive for timely completion and an adverse remark against the monitoring official in the event of delays. Ahead of the Bibek Debroy committee presenting its views on restricting the role of the railway board to policymaking, Prabhu has given instructions that operational decisions would be made at the zone level.

To know the lay of the land, the minister is proposing to come up with a white paper on the financial health of one of the biggest rail network under a single authority. This will be placed in Parliament in the coming winter session while another strategy paper or “business plan” will be presented by the minister during the budget session in February. This will look at various operational issues, including manpower management, public-private partnership, outsourcing and mobilisation of resources. The minister has already spelt out that selling of land assets is a no-go. Is downsizing or further outsourcing on the cards? “We have not yet applied our minds to it. Once the strategy paper is ready, all these issues will be explained,” Prabhu told Outlook. “There must be some logic to what is happening. There is no plan as of now to downsize. Whatever is in the interest of the railways, we will continue and whatever is not will be discontinued.”