Reforming The Indian Railways – On The Right Track
Unification into a single service of the railways is a ‘leap in the dark’ kind of situation, & is the beginning of the journey.
For the past 3-4 years, Indian Railways’ finances have been under severe stress. This year witnessed an even steeper downward trend. The railways’ revenue this year is estimated to fall short of its target by more than Rs 20,000 crore. Railways’ share in the national freight basket is also constantly contracting. A bold decision of discontinuing the busy season surcharge of 15 percent has brought no relief. It is quite evident that the present organisational structure is just not delivering.
A change in the administrative structure on business lines has been touted as the panacea for decades. That the government finally decided to bite the bullet is hail worthy. Many previous governments shuddered at the last step for crossing the rubicon. Unification of eight Group ‘A’ services is expected to ameliorate the situation.
Whether it should have been merged into a single service or two services is the moot point.
The present administrative set-up of the Railways has evolved over a time span of more than 100 years and bears a strong British stamp. With approximately 13 lakh employees, nearly 400 categories of Group ‘C’ employees and 10 Group ‘A’ services, of which eight are organised Group ‘A’ services (Security in the form of Railway Protection Force and Medical Service are the other two), Indian Railways today is a very complex, multi-departmental, multi-layered organisation.
Departmentalism
Many expert committees have extensively analysed the pros and cons of tweaking this organisational structure to improve its efficiency and delivery of service.
One common refrain in these committee recommendations has been an emphasis on restructuring to weed out the intense departmentalism that makes various arms of the railway work at cross purposes.
These departmental silos were not there till 1990s, except for some irritants like treating some departments as ‘major’ and certain others as ‘minor’.
The intense desire of every organised Group ‘A’ service to have its own Member in the Railway Board generated a lot of bickering, and a consequent hostile atmosphere. Much of it came to surface recently in the ‘Vande Bharat Express’ episode.
It appears that the government has suddenly realised the noxious atmosphere pervading the administrative set-up, making it bold enough to take such a monumental decision.
Seniority Battles
There has been another factor which has played a significant role in creating bitterness among various services. Till 2016, UPSC held three different examinations to recruit candidates for the eight Group ’A’ services — Civil Services Examination, Central Engineering Services Examination and Special Class Railway Apprentices Examination. Last of these was discontinued only in 2016.
Providing three different entries in the organisation created the distinct problem of fixing inter-se seniority among all services, each having a different (and not fixed) date of entry every year.
To worsen it , while the minimum age of appearing in the Civil Services Examination has always been 21 years, that of Engineering Services Examination used to be 20 years till 1997. Special Class Railway Apprentice candidates were even better placed, as they could appear at the age of 16 years and also join earlier than others, as their process of examination was much quicker. The problem was resolved by introducing the rule of 6 ( maximum number of General Managers from one service), which was changed to rule of 9 when new zones were introduced in 2003, and stands at 10 with the addition of Metro Railway and Raibareli Modern Coach Factory as new zones. Now, there is a quota for Divisonal Railway Managers’ posts also for every organised Group ‘A’ service. Needless to add merit and quality is the casualty in such a scenario.
Seven Committees
The first expert committee which analysed the reasons for the railways’ tepid performance was the Prakash Tandon Committee in 1994, which inter alia batted for a single unified cadre, but grossly overlooked the inherent problems in implementing the idea without causing disruption.
In 2001, the Expert Group on Indian Railways headed by Dr. Rakesh Mohan insisted on restructuring the Railway Board on business lines to suit future corporatisation of the Railways.
The Expert Group for Modernisation of Indian Railways headed by Sam Pitroda (2012) and the High Level Safety Review Committee chaired by Dr. Kakodkar echoed similar sentiments, calling for reorganisation of the Railway Board.
But, a serious examination of the proposal to merge the Group A services was taken by the National Transport Development Policy Committee chaired by Dr. Rakesh Mohan (2014) and then again by the Committee for Mobilisation of Resources for Major Railway Projects and Restructuring of Railway Ministry and Railway Board under the chairmanship of Dr. Bibek Debroy (2015).
The National Transport Development Policy Committee examined the problem of recruitment and subsequent training of selected candidates in Railway subjects, to equip them with relevant and adequate knowledge to work in the organisation efficiently. It also tried to solve the problem of short tenures in the posts of Divisonal Railway Managers and General Managers which was not in the overall interest of good governance.
The Debroy Committee went even further while examining the issues of departmental bickering and suggested a model of fixing inter-se seniority on the basis of percentile scores.
Both these reports, after a very detailed study (which was missing in the Prakash Tandon Committee Report), came to a conclusion that merging into two services — one recruited through Civil Services Examination (Indian Railway Logistics Service) and the other through Engineering Services Examination (Indian Railway Technical Service) was a preferred option, which could be implemented with least upheaval. It would take care of extinguishing the silos while still attending to the needs of specialised knowledge, required to operate the railway services safely and economically.
It is only the beginning of the journey. The road ahead is paved with many potholes. Many imponderables need to be sorted out to reach the goal. Both the Department of Personnel Training and Union Public Service Commission have to carefully devise a process for implementing the decision to ensure least possible disruption. A way forward could be formation of a High Powered Committee of experts which can initiate a dialogue with all stakeholders to understand their problems and assuage their fears. This will help in chalking out step wise action plan with time-lines to implement changes as quickly as possible.
The die has been cast and the government needs to be complimented for taking a bold decision. However, if the implementation process is not carefully supervised, it has the potential of creating the same results for the Indian Railways as the merger of Air India and the Indian Airlines has created for Indian aviation.
Vivek Sahai is a former Chairman of the Railway Board, and Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation.
The views expressed here are those of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views of BloombergQuint or its editorial team.