Railway Budget - I

Five Year Action Plan (2015-19) to transform the Railways

Railway budget, part of trilogy of documents viz. the White Paper, Budget 2015-16 & a Vision-2030 document, has set four goals for Indian Railways to transform over next five years.

1)      To deliver a sustained and measurable improvement in customer experience.

2)      To make Rail a safer means of travel.

3)      To expand Indian Railways capacity substantially and modernise infrastructure :

                                 i.            increase daily passenger carrying capacity from 21million to 30 million

                               ii.            increase track length by 20% from 1,14,000 km to 1,38,000 km

                             iii.            grow annual freight carrying capacity from 1 billion to 1.5 billion tonnes

4)      To make Railways  financially self-sustainable. Generate large surpluses from operations.

Execution strategy to have five drivers:

1)    Adopting a medium-term perspective : investment of Rs. 8.5 lakh crore in next five years

2)   Building Partnerships: partnering with key stakeholders : States, PSU’s, partner with multilateral and bi-lateral organizations & other governments to gain access to long term financing.

3)   Leveraging additional resources : IR envisages investment of Rs. 8.5 lakh crore in next five years to be mobilized from multiple sources to cater to funding i.e Multilateral development banks, pension funds.

4)   Revamping management practices, systems, processes, and re-tooling of human resources :

Ø  Targeted operating ratio for 2015-16 at 88.5% against 91.8%in 2014-15: best in the last 9 years.

Ø   IR to speed up decision making, tighten accountability, improve management information systems: training and development of human resource.

5)   To set standards for Governance and Transparency

Eleven major thrust areas of Action Plan:

1)      Cleanliness : Swachh Rail Swachh Bharat and  new department for cleanliness

2)      Bed linen : NIFT to design; online booking of disposable bed rolls

3)      Help-line : 24X7 helpline number 138;toll-free number 182 for security related complaints

4)      Ticketing

5)      Catering

6)      Leveraging technology: Hand-held terminals to Travelling Ticket Examiners (TTEs) and SMS alerts

7)      Surveillance

8)      Entertainment

9)      Station facilities : Wi-Fi, online booking of wheel chairs

10)  Train capacity : capacity in identified trains be augmented to run with 26 coaches; more General class coaches be added in identified trains

11)  Comfortable travel