For long IE has been emphasizing the imperative for focusing on railways and not just on the highways. The road transport lobby has been powerful and vocal. Led by large manufacturers of commercial vehicles, passenger cars and two wheelers and by large developers in the infrastructure sector, road development received continuous and sizable attention. The added advantage was the ownership of road transport corporations by the states.The NDA government under Vajpayee embarked on a massive highways development programme. A simple and ingenius method of levying a cess on the consumption of petrol and diesel took care of the funding needs. These cumulatively contributed to a rapid increase in the share of road transport in the volume of freight moved by roads to around 70 per cent compared to just around 10 per cent in 1950. This was at the cost of development of the more economical railways.

IE has been pointing to the dis-economies involved in moving goods over long distances in modest tonnages by road, especially after the oil shock of 1973. The nation failed to reap the advantages of moving freight over long distances through electric traction. EU countries and more recently, China are good examples of the effective use of railways for long distance movement of passengers and freight.

We have had the opportunity of interacting with a succession of railway ministers from 1973. We could remember just two of these who had brought in fresh thinking - Madhavrao Scindia and George Fernandes. The latter, in particular, was brilliant in stressing the impact of the railways on rapid economic development of the region served by it and to the very poor annual additions made since the British handed in 1947 a reasonably healthy system extended over 54,000 km . To Fernandes should go the credit for the entirely new concept of the Konkan Railway along the west coast linking Mumbai with Mangalore. Jaffer Sharief strove hard to move towards a uniform broad gauge system. Even electrification conceived in the early era of planning did not receive much attention with progress being slow and halting.

Average addition to the length of the rail lines has been a little over 160 km per year though one witnesses some improvement in recent years. Accelerated economic growth that has contributed to increased freight and passenger traffic has helped improve railways’ finances. One thus hears of plans for a more rapid expansion. Liberal funding by the Japanese also promises a quick construction of a dedicated freight corridor from Delhi to Mumbai. Such efforts are not seen in the development of such facilities in other regions.

IE has suggested such dedicated rail corridors between Chennai and Bengaluru and between Vijayawada and Kochi. These corridors, serving highly populated continuum of industrial areas in the southern states, will provide the trigger for faster economic development.

China has modeled rail development on the lines of Western Europe and Japan. She had been constructing high speed rail lines capable of speeds of over 300 kmph. At such speeds Bengaluru can be reached from Chennai in a little over an hour against the present five hours plus taken by the Shatabdhi Express. Luckily today funding options are also available from bilateral and multilateral agencies as also by prosperous private corporations like Reliance.

Not long ago, the Adani Group implemented an imaginative project connecting Bhatinda in Punjab with the Mundra Port bringing a distance advantage of 438 km over Mumbai. In this the company had joined hands with the Indian Railway and Gujarat government and constructed missing links in the then existing rail lines from Mundra to Bhatinda. The Adanis also won the bid for containerised freight movement of foodgrains and for storing these. Their experience provides the potential for railway development through public private participation.

Warren Buffet, the brilliant investor, recently shown his faith in the future profitability of rail movement: he has invested massively to acquire controlling stake in the Burlington Northern Railroad, one of the biggest US railroads. Our contributor T B Kapali attributes this as fundamentally driven by the long-term criticality and profitability of the rail freight sector in the US and its better positioning relative to the road transport sector.

We suggest Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to nurture a powerful lobby for railways.