Few railway ministers have been able to look forward to presenting the annual Budget with such happiness as Lalu Prasad. The public sector behemoth is in better financial health than it almost ever was in living memory. This is prompting its planners to think big and long-term.
Traditionally, the Railway Budget is full of announcements of new trains and new lines. The minister will inevitably succumb to this up to a point. But there is a newer danger - going in for glamorous eye-catching projects now that the resources are there, thereby neglecting mundane priorities, which remain as critical as ever.
We do not need more or faster passenger trains, McDonald's at railway stations or even Internet access while travelling. We need the railways to be safe, punctual, clean, customer-friendly and bottom line-oriented.
Great progress has been made on the safety front. There has been a steady decline in the number of accidents involving trains in general as also passenger trains from 2000-01 to 2004-05.
The number of human fatalities from accidents has also been coming down but there was a blip in 2002-03. The downward trend since the turn of the decade is important because the previous period (1995-96 to 1999-00) was marked by ups and downs with no clear trend.
So overall, the railways get high marks on safety with encouragement to make things even better, particularly devising ways of fighting terrorism, which has been highlighted by the latest tragedy.
At the opposite end of the spectrum stands the railways' record of punctuality. Nobody takes the official figures on this seriously and anecdotal evidence suggests that punctuality remains appallingly poor.
This has implications beyond punctuality. Poor timeliness implies systems and procedures not being followed and laxity in discipline. If left unchecked, this can have serious repercussions on safety. So punctuality is a critical benchmark reflecting the overall health and purposefulness in the organisation. By this token the railways have a long way to go.
As bad as punctuality, or maybe even worse, is the Railways' record of cleanliness. It is high time something was done on this front. Sizeable amounts are spent on all kinds of passenger amenities, including such meaningless items as electronic signs along platforms to indicate coach numbers, but most railway stations and a lot of long-distance trains stink most of the time.
There really has to be some system of not allowing human excreta to reach the ground while trains wait at platforms. Flushing out tracks periodically is not the answer. An innovative solution has to be found whereby trains can hold on to their rubbish at stations, make a very brief stop at bays outside stations, where the load is deposited, toilets flushed out and the journey resumed in a few minutes. Sweepers cleaning out toilets on long-distance trains every so often is easier to organise but is not done a lot of the time.
For a minimum level of passenger care and comfort it is necessary to ensure that no one has to wait in a queue to buy a train ticket for more than three minutes, maximum five. It is infuriating to see long queues of passengers sweating it out to buy tickets in a country in which so many (like the minister's relatives) do not care to buy tickets.
Some marginal redeployment of staff and special counters during peak seasons are what is needed and within the railways' resources. The minister and his top managers have to decide that they will not tolerate the queues any more. Then they will disappear.
The railways have been trying to reduce queues, particularly for train reservations, by facilitating online booking but there is a critical flaw in this. You really pay a fine by way of a service charge for an e-ticket when you should be getting a discount for not clogging up Railway reservation counters and taking the time of railway staff issuing tickets manually. The IT costs have to be set off against staff time saved.
Overall, the Railways make inadequate use of information technology. They have traditionally been good at using IT to facilitate passenger reservations but poor at doing the same for freight. It is still not possible to track online every railway wagon in play.
You can track rakes but not wagons everywhere. If truck fleet operators can now track their individual trucks across the country through the use of GPS technology then why can't we track all wagons everywhere?
Plus, all train drivers and guards should be able to communicate with their running staff wherever they are if there is an accident. Mobile phones have done part of the job but we know how patchy the coverage is.
The Railways have a massive fibre optic network. That plus some towers along the way and some use of wireless-in-local-loop technology should deliver the goods. Discussions have started with some mobile phone operators in this connection but this needs speeding up.
Several key issues have to be addressed to improve profitability and use resources better. A long-term one is to complete missing links to connect ports and other points of high-volume freight traffic, which have tremendous revenue potential.
Vigorous effort is also needed to sit with large retailers to become part of their supply chain with warehouses and cold storages on available railway land. Looking at the long term, the railways should lay great stress on rapidly completing the dedicated freight corridors joining Delhi with Mumbai and Kolkata.
It will be clear from the foregoing that no mention has been made of the perennial need to upgrade rolling stock, signalling and cargo-handling capabilities like sidings. These undoubtedly need attention but identifying priorities means picking up a few critical elements and concentrating on them, no matter how unglamorous they may be. Like cleaning up the s***.