The Indian Railways might be on a project sanctioning spree, but the ground reality is that there isn't much fuel in the tanks to get these projects from the file to the field. During a press interaction in Mumbai on Thursday, Railway Board Member (Traffic) DP Pande admitted as much.
"We have some 1,500-odd projects Rs1.4 lakh crore lined up. However, we just have Rs4,000 crore in our coffers at the moment. So, prioritising the projects and taking them up according to importance will be the way to go," Pande said in response to a query on when Mumbaikars would get to see the much-needed Parel terminus.
Unfortunately for railway users, this 'prioritising' has meant nothing but delays in terms of time and huge cost escalation with the latter sometimes making a project lose its viability.
Citing an example, a top city railway official pointed out to the fate of the 5th and 6th line project between Kurla and CST. "The Rs900-crore project was given final approval by the Railway Board on September 8 this year. It includes Rs100 crore to build the Parel suburban terminus and also an elevated harbour line system at Kurla. The first of the works related to the plan began only in mid-October; that too a small Rs1.97 crore plan to build a new route relay room," said the official.
The late sanction of money for such big projects, said the official, could mean that the entire 5th and 6th line Kurla-CST project might take the better part of a decade. "By then the returns in terms of passenger comforts is lost," said the official.
In his July 8 railway budget speech, the then railway minister Sadananda Gowda had told Parliament about the precarious situation the transporter found itself in. During the 2013-14 fiscal, Gowda told Parlaiment, traffic revenue was Rs1,39,558 crore. However, working expenses during the same period was Rs1,30,321 crore, a situation which meant that railways was spending almost 94 per cent of all its earnings in just trying to sustain the system.
As per Gowda's budget speech, a sum of Rs5 lakh crore is needed over the next ten years — Rs50,000 crore per year — to complete the ongoing projects alone. "No one has any idea how this money is going to come. Most railway sectors are not profitable or tempting enough for private investment. The ground reality is that except for all the talk about bullet trains, there isn't much to write home about as far as the railways is concerned," said the official.
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