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Shri R.K.Thoopal in his excellent compilation on 'Vision 2010 for Indian Railways' had identified the profligacy of the political and the Administrative Wings of the Railways as well as the system of raising resources to match the spending as the main reasons for the present ills of the Indian Railways. Unless these are corrected our problems will continue into 2025 and beyond.
Notwithstanding these problems, Indian Railways have a lot of fundamental strengths which need to be built on and we need to learn from the failures of the past. Rakesh Mohan Committee had identified certain solutions - some good, some bad and some ugly. But, unfortunately we seem to have thrown the baby away with bathwater and nothing much has been heard of the committee after the seminar in Railway Staff College last year. . If only we can seize these opportunities of the economic changes in the country, we can realise our singular vision of making Indian Railways the preferred transporter of the future.
The problems faced by us are well-known. Even if Corporatisation is not the 'astra' to be used by us, the failures of the past leave an unequivocal message unless we get rid of inefficiency, poor management techniques, empire-building due to departmentalism, unjustifiable cross sub-sidisation of services, poor public perception, low staff morale, and crippling finances, we are bound to sink. We are to work with the reality that our prime competitor, viz. roads, will get more and more budget support and we have to manage mostly with our resources.
We have been specializing in finding temporary solutions to permanent problems and permanent solutions to temporary problems. I hope the next twenty years will change this. A massive exercise of
re-engineering our procedures would have to be undertaken by making use of e-applications. To achieve optimisation of benefits, complete transparency in procedures becomes imperative. Codes, manuals will therefore have to be rewritten to accommodate simpler, more relevant and more user-friendly framework providing greater cohesiveness between departments so that integrated approach can be achieved. File tracking and office management systems would become indispensable. The application packages being developed i.e. MMIS, FMIS, PMIS, FOIS etc. will have to be integrated, a critical factor in order to achieve the optimum results from the backend and front end applications and to ensure the best services to our customers. Infact, rationalisation of procedures is a prerequisite before development of advanced applications. E.g. PMIS AND FMIS can be of full use to the organisation if all the staff payments are taken over by the accounts department leaving Personnel department to concentrate on the core function of knowledge and quality HRD. The present system of preparation of bills by one department and passing of the same by another was, perhaps, relevant to an era where mistrust was the keyword in stadministration but not for the 21 Century. Further, many of the tasks done by Accounts department such as loans and advances of all types can be off-loaded to Banks and even PF, GIS and Pension Funds in Public/Private sector after negotiating with them to the advantage of employees and of course ensuring security of the funds. Railways should divest non-core functions with more and more competitive market options for products and services opening up. Of course, the decision on what is non-core should be arrived at after a lot of discussions and thought, but within a specified time-frame. Every action begins with thought but at the same time you will never plough a field if you keep on turning it over in your mind.
Innovations in procedures would also lead to downsizing of the organisation which is the pressing need of the hour when the finances are hard to come by and 60% of our revenue generation makes good the whopping salary and pension bills of our employees. Indian Railways should be known in 2025 as the best Railway in the world without the dubious distinction of being the single largest employer in the world. To strike gold there would be no option but to go in for a golden handshake. Pension has been a great cause of concern for the Railways and the pension payments which was just Rs.116 crores in 80-81 has already touched Rs.6000 crores. With increased downsizing, the day is not far off when the pension bill may overtake the wage bill. There is an urgent need to revise the pension policy and plan better methods of managing the pension funds as suggested by the Asian Institute of Transport Development in their publication 'Greying of Indian Railways'. The entire management of the pension fund should be given to professionals as suggested earlier.
Resource mobilization will be one of the most important area for all Managers. It is said that Air-port Authority of India gets nearly 50% of its earnings from non-air craft related activities like shopping etc. The Railways have even bigger scope than the airport as many of our terminals are in the prime areas of the city. Another area of Resource mobilization is the management of funds with railways for which special dispensation may be obtained from Finance Ministry.
Project Management which is one of the weakest areas of financial management currently would assume tremendous importance, as, a profit oriented growth strategy would involve commercially driven capital investment. As already stated, roadways will continue to get more and more plan funds leaving the
railways to fend for themselves through railways funds. Therefore, a desperate need for taking up only viable projects and they should be completed quickly so as to reap the benefit. The present method of classifying the works expenditure into Plan Heads has also increased deparmentalisation without any tangible benefit to railways
Information Technology is here to stay and Railways which was the pioneer in the use of IT 36 years ago are now behind most organizations. We should adopt IT as one of the most potent solutions to a fast paced growth. Over the years there has been considerable progress as far as, back office computerisation is concerned. However, back office computerisation alone which has very little impact on the public interface is not sustainable in the long run due to lack of public pressure. Computerisation of Passenger reservation system demonstrates the effectiveness of the approach of front office applications to back office and not the other way round.
Railways are handling huge volumes of cash in earnings and expenditure. IT can be used -to avoid cash handling by use of smart cards for staff as well as customers in order to offer a wide range of transactional opportunities even from remote areas to open payment gateways e.g. virtual terminals, shopping carts etc. by major freight customers for payment to Railways and by vendors/contractors for receiving payments from Railways. E-ticketing along with customer activated terminal(CAT) or kiosk, homebanking, smartcards, debit/credit cards would help evolve a paperless, safe, fast, and practical transactional environment which would be realtime and save time and money. I dream that an IR customer in 2025 would not be required to visit a railway office/station except for actual transportation. He or she should have all interaction in his own environment, provided that internet/IT services are
accessible to customers. This should be fully realisable with large scale networking and web-enabled services being launched by Railways. Accessibility is the keyword as networking infrastructure has to ensure on-line information to management and staff as well as to customers.
In fact, apart from being used as for payments, smart cards can also be used as ID, for regulating concessions and employee-related activities like passes, PTOs and even pension. This will lead to Financial analysis of various concessions such as Senior Citizens, Freedom Fighters, Handicapped etc. as well as privilege passes, so that meaningful decisions can be taken. With proper policy initiatives taken in the next two years, it is felt that smart cards would gain a major presence by 2025 and allow secure e-commerce.
Electronic Data Interchange(EDI) which denotes paperless financial transaction would become the norm for payment of bought out items from suppliers. Railways would operate bank accounts through banking terminals in its offices linked to bank computers. Railways would thus carry out transactions like transferring of funds, managing cash flow, opening letters of credit etc. without any paperwork
A major headway for Accounts department would be development and implementation of a value for money internal auditing function including program evaluations. The role would not be restricted to management interest disclosures or whistleblowing but to enhance financial statement integrity and pre-empt accounting games. It would also enable transparency and objectivity in financial statements so that there is no scope to disguise losses like Arthur Anderson who disguised more than $1billion in Enron losses as a one time event. In fact, neural network approach, a decision support system to build an expert system which lets the software literally learn from example and experience can be implemented. It is widely used in foreign banks to detect credit card frauds. An efficient, unified and meaningful coding and classification system would go a long way in assimilation of vast and meaningful data base.
150 years of Indian Railways which we celebrate now has been a journey of sweat and dedication but it is also an opening of opportunity to greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. The question to ask ourselves is- are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp the opportunities and accept the challenges of future and focus on our goals even if it appears like doom and gloom? The sun's energy warms the world but when you focus it through a magnifying glass it can start a fire. That's what we need to do - focus on our vision and start a revolution all over again. Amen.
(Presented during a Seminar at Railway Staff College, Vadodara during May 2002)
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