(This article appeared in Business Line, 2002.)
Victory at last! Nitish has carved for himself a niche in the history books for enhancing the already bloated babudom of Indian Railways, a wasteful exercise which the Railway Board mandarins themselves are not enthusiastic about. Arguments that creation of new zones is akin to bifurcation of states for better administration simply do not wash since Railways' primary task is transport and not maintaining law and order. Basic units viz. the divisions are already in place -- more than 60 of them, and new zones would only create more confusion and loss of operating efficiency, at a time when consolidation of it myriad activities and down sizing needs to be accorded top priority.
In a major move which will cast its shadow on the Indian economy for years to come, the Cabinet has now decided to stand by the '96 and '98 decisions to create 7 new rail zones, taking the total from 9 to 16 . Unfortunately the whole issue became clouded as a Nitish-Mamata spat on the bifurcation of the Eastern Railway, in which the NDA had but to side with Nitish. In the process the folly of balkanization, or now popularly known as Hajipurisation of the Indian Railways took a back seat.
In the long history of the Railways contribution, perhaps only a handful of Railway Ministers is worth a mention. Starting with N. Gopalaswamy Ayyangar who took charge as the first ever Minister and reorganized the motley collection of 42 Railway systems into 6 zones (increased a few years later to 9), we had T.A. Pai who in the very short tenure earnestly set about getting the nation's economic life line to work on commercial lines.
Madhu Dandawate went out of his way to ensure that Railways' immense resources were not misused. The list ends with the late Madhav Rao Scindia who in the late '80s took the 1.7 million strong behemoth to scale new heights of performance and efficiency, including introducing for the first time ever the concept of Inter-City trains. Rest of the dozen or so who adorned the Minister's chair in Rail Bhavan, were acutely aware of the complexity of the organisation and wisely allowed the system to function with as little interference as possible. Knowing fully well the vital role the Railways was playing, and would continue to play for years to come in the nation's economic growth, they had refrained from using its vast resources for their personal gains or as a vehicle for building up their popularity base. That is until a decade back when the indomitable Jaffer Sharief took over the reigns.
He set about putting to optimum use the vast resources, financial and otherwise, to push through some of his pet projects. Thus was born the bottom less pit known as the project 'Unigauge' under which a herculean task of converting over 25,000 kms. of meter to broad gauge was taken up! Suresh Kalmadi who followed Sharief's ignominious exit was quite happy creating a new division at Pune and left the Railway Board mandarins much to themselves to run things as they deemed fit. But in '96 within a few weeks of his assuming charge of world's largest Railways Ram Vilas Paswan knew that he had struck gold when his able aids dug up the H.C.Sarin report of 1985.
The report mentioned the possibility of forming 4 new zones. Never mind if it had not been accepted then, or years later rejected by parliamentary committees, and the CAG, Paswan immediately announced creation of a brand new zone in his constituency viz. Hajipur, even though it had nowhere been in the reckoning in the Sarin report. Perhaps to justify his action five more zones were created in quick succession with headquarters at Jabalpur, Jaipur, Allahabad, Bhubaneswar, Bangalore, pleasing no end his political allies in these states.
In '98 the shrewd Nitish Kumar lost no time in blowing the whistle and putting on record through his now famous 'Status Paper' and later on a 'White Paper' on the Railways tabled on the floor of the Lok Sabha, highlighting the sad state of its finances created by his worthy predecessors. A huge back log of Rs. 35,000 crores worth of projects, mostly un-remunerative, faced the cash strapped organization. It amply justified his inability to oblige his political allies when they approached him with their long list of populist demands. Mamata Banerjee was quite content with keeping the new zones issue on the back burner, knowing fully well the financial constraints and the fact that they would neither generate more traffic nor improve efficiency.
Staging a come back last year Nitish found it prudent to keep quite till last month, when perhaps under pressure from the states who had been promised the goodies 6 years back, and realising that he may have to bow out in 2004, he threw all caution to winds and announced that the New Zones would be functional within the next few months. Opinion of the Rakesh Mohan committee which had last year found creation of new zones 'of dubious value' and the Railway Board's own recorded minutes in which it had given a thumbs down to the scheme, were simply brushed aside.
It is a decision which is fraught with serious implications as a long list of States, including heavy weights such as Gujarat, Punjab, Kerala, Jharkhand, Haryana are waiting in the wings to press their own claims. Not a very happy augury for the next decade, leave alone the next 150 years!
Hopefully wiser counsels would prevail, placing the fate of the nation's economic and industrial life line in hands of the likes of Arun Shourie who in his very brief tenure has successfully master minded the extremely complex task of disinvestment. May be because he has no axe to grind, no political allies to please, or simply because he is a political 'rookie'. Railways could also considerably gain by plugging into this intellectual power house, to recharge their almost defunct batteries, and make an honest attempt at looking beyond their nose!