The Railscape

The Ministry of Railways, Government of India, has been on a race to launch the fastest and most luxurious trains, but there has been significant collateral-damage in the process. In this blog, as someone who is learning about policy, I want to call out a few of those things that may be hurting the low-income groups (the majority) in the country while making the lives of the privileged even better. Economists, most of whom you'll speak with, will tell you that trade is the way to make everyone better off. Using that logic into what the ministry of railways has been up to - the plan to set up high speed rail network will witness FDI inflow (read more about foreign aid), more jobs, better tourism, yada yada, but there's definitely been unintended or ignored consequences.

Let's start by talking about the show stopper, Vande Bharats (VBs). These trains have been put in place to cater to high income groups that need to reach places faster, maybe to promote trade, and maybe to make lives better for everyone. These trains have been the most celebrated and promoted project of the Modi government which guarantees to be the most luxurious and punctual type of train in India today. But we need to understand the cost that several others pay to make a VB reach its destination on time. If you've ever travelled in the local trains (not the Mumbai locals but the usual blue/yellow trains that stop at each stop) after the VBs were launched, there's been at least one instance where your train would have been stopped and delayed to allow for the VB to be punctual. The 'not the Mumbai locals' clarification was intentional because, as far as I am aware, those ones run on tracks separate from the usual intercity trains and aren't affected by them.

Why do we care about the local trains being stopped, you ask? These trains are a state's lifelines. The Mumbai local crowd is the same as the crowd of these trains on which the dabbawalas to people working in the stock exchange all travel together. If these people don't reach their offices on time, several blue collar work in the public and private domain gets delayed! In one instance, a railway officer in Kerala was suspended after a VB was delayed for two minutes during trial run. Another thing to point out here is that an individual who can afford to travel in a VB once may not be able to do that frequently. Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw claimed that the occupancy was at 98 percent until May 2024.

What can be done to not have the low income groups suffer? My not so rail-aware brain tells me these things -

- Run these high speed trains on different tracks like the Mumbai Locals (which will delay their launch by several years because of lack of infrastructure)

- Doubling of tracks at most places while reducing curves and gradients to handle higher speeds

- find a way to not run these trains through popular stations during the office rush hours by may be assigning it a stop elsewhere during those hours?

I am sure a lot more can be done here, maybe just with a little bit of schedule change.

You may have come across tweets from frustrated passengers who posted videos of overcrowded trains, specifically reserved compartments, being 'invaded' by folks with unreserved tickets. According to Business Standard in November 2023, around 95.3% of railway passengers in a span of 7 months in 2023 travelled in general and sleeper classes. Amidst all of this, the railways decided to ramp up production of AC coaches because they yield better profits.

The other justification to ramp up AC coaches could be the data from the National Rail Plan 2030 denoting a 9.11% average annual growth rate (2008-2018) in long distance AC coaches, whereas just 1.44% in non AC ones. This report also mentions that the stagnation in supply of non AC and unreserved may be reason for stagnation of it's growth too.

The Financial Express mentions that even though the production of high-value coaches has jumped, the per passenger revenue has moved up too. When people didn't have enough sleeper class tickets to book, they could either travel second class or burn a hole in their pockets opting for an AC ticket. While the later is highly unlikely, those holding an unreserved ticket are now trying to squeeze into reservation coaches. Railways was quick to realise the mistake they made and announced that they are ramping up production of non-AC coaches.

I think that's enough evidence to believe that the majority in India is the low income groups, and your public transport policies have to be catering to them. I don't mean to say that the majority of India lives in the villages, but just merely that the majority cannot afford to travel a VB frequently.