In its first attempt at restructuring the railways, the Government has set up a high level committee to reconfigure the railways board as well as suggest steps for resource mobilisation for major railway projects, such as tracks to coal bearing areas and increasing line capacity on trunk routes.
To be headed by economist Bibek Debroy, the other members are former Cabinet Secretary K M Chandrashekhar, former National Stock Exchange Managing Director Ravi Narain, Dr. Debroy’s colleague in Centre for Policy Research Partha Mukopadhyay and former Procter & Gamble CMD Gurcharan Das. The sixth member will be a nominee from the Finance Ministry of Finance.
The Government had set up several committees to suggest improving railway functioning since liberalisation began in the early nineties. But each time a report was submitted, the Government preferred to cherry-pick a few income generating recommendations while shelving those relating to changing the department based structure of the Indian Railways.
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As pointed out by Railway Minister D V Sadananda Gowda while presenting the Railway Budget this July, ``funds to the tune of Rs. 50,000 crores per year are required for the next 10 years for ongoing projects alone.’’ Further on in his Budget speech, the Minister indicated the Modi Government’s priorities``…the Railway Board due to overlapping roles of policy formulation and implementation, has become unwieldy. Therefore I propose to separate these two functions.’’
Among others, some sort of revamp of the railways in the last two decades has been suggested by committees headed by D M Nanjundappa, Prakash Tandon, Anil Kakodkar, Rakesh Mohan and Sam Pitroda.