Interesting that my weekend, filled with reading about Indian Railways, should end in this finale. The book I read is well written and comprehensive. Changing Tracks by V. Nilakant and S. Ramnarayan is about how Indian Railways made a dramatic financial turn-around by conceiving and implementing various strategic and major operational improvements and in the process made a cash surplus of 20000+ crore rupees in 2008, vastly different from their position of near bankruptcy in 2000. Various management pundits had suggested radial restructuring and privatization as well as fare increases. But the organization found leadership and commitment in Lalu Prasad, a savvy minister, and his Officer on Special Duty Sudhir Kumar. Lalu reinforced Railways' commitment to the common man. Sudhir Kumar assembled talent to go about executing a vision of a turn-around that should be the envy of any large world-famous corporation.
The authors are to be congratulated on a brilliant book. I give below pictures of the book and sleeve notes so you can quickly read what the book is about. At Rs. 399, Harper Collins have brought out a book that is a MUST READ text book for any Indian engineering or management student.
I just give you some facts which fascinated me.
- In 2007, India had the largest railway, ferrying 17 million passengers every day over 695 billion passenger kilometres every year!
- Indian Railways employs 1.7 million people and supports 1.1 million pensioners.
- The average fare in 2002 per passenger km was 0.55 cents (US) vs. China's 1.25 cents.
- In 2000-1, accidents per million train km were 0.65, compared to 0.65 in Japan and 0.91 in Germany.
So Indian Railways is the largest, cheapest and one of the safest train systems in the world!
Some beautiful "human" stories in the book.
- Vivek Sahai, AGM, Western Railway and his crew restored the Bombay trains within 12 hours of a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in seven trains at 6:30PM (peak hour) on 11 July 2006 that ripped apart trains, cluttered the tracks and killed hundreds. It was an incredible act of engineering and commitment to fight all odds to restore life and the six million commuter traffic within hours to a city dulled by death and destruction. Sahai must have remembered Hanuman's heroic act of bringing Sanjeevani.
- When India was cut up during partition, Sardar Patel was keen to restore rail links to eastern Indian states like Assam. He gave a free hand to Chief Engineer Karnail Singh, who achieved the impossible task of building 700 km of track in malarial jungles with 635 cm of rainfall and several major rivers, by working on a war footing with 15000 workers (brought in from all over the country) within 18 months.
- At the behest of PM Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, the Railway Board Chairman Gujral ran 200 trains (during an illegal railway strike period), to transport a few lakh party workers overnight to arrive in Delhi for the political rally, He asked and got in return one favour too... everyone bought a ticket!
- Lalu wanted a Garib Rath, a poor man's A/C train. Sudhir Kumar took the challenge and designed and built with the best talent in Railways a train within EIGHT MONTHs with design and build quality to rival Tata locomotives. The train could carry 1920 passengers at a third of the COST of Rajdhani Express. An impressed Lalu told Sudhir Kumar, "Aapne to kamaal kar diya, ji!"
Congratulations to Prof. Nilakant and Prof. Ramnarayan!
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