Suresh Prabhu: On the fast track

Railway minister Suresh Prabhu inaugurates a new platform at Kanjurmarg railway station from Dadar through remote control in Mumbai on May 21. (Photo: PTI)

Under Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu, the Indian Railways appears to have come out of the rut, and overcome its earlier state of acute financial stress, with Rs 5 lakh crores worth of projects stuck. Taking charge at Rail Bhavan six months after the Narendra Modi government came to office, this chartered accountant quickly demonstrated why he is known as a man of reforms. The first minister to take charge of the Railways in the Modi government was D.V. Sadananda Gowda, but he too failed to bring any effective solutions. The change started soon after Mr Prabhu took over in November 2014.

To address the Railways’ immediate requirements, Mr Prabhu sought to find funding sources outside the normal Gross Budgetary Support. “Even the money the finance ministry provides through GBS is sourced from debt financing. Why should not the Railways go to the market and get the money,” he asked while presenting his first Rail Budget.

He soon got a Rs 1.5 lakh crore soft loan from LIC, and began to meet the heads of financial institutions to urge them to lend to private firms working on rail projects. The effect of this was quickly visible: the Railways commissioned 2,828 km of new lines, doubled broad gauge conversion in the last financial year. This was four times the annual average in 2009-14. “Earlier we had no assured funding, and thus projects were not taken up for commissioning with deadlines. Now we know the funds are there and the race is to expedite commissioning. In the current financial year we will commission 2,900 km of new tracks, that will be 4,500 km in 2017-18 and 7,000 km in 2018-19,” said V.K. Gupta, member (engineering) at the Railway Board.

The twin dedicated freight corridors linking Dadri-Mumbai and Ludhiana-Dankuni (Kolkata) have seen a major push and Mr Prabhu has said they will be commissioned in 2018. The minister thus appears logical when he promised he will double the speed of passenger and freight trains in the next four years, besides ensuring tickets on demand.

But what really brought about a remarkable change in public perception about the Railways is the effectiveness of the real-time grievance redressal system Mr Prabhu set up, that will now be studied by IIM Ahmedabad.

“I initially used to use Twitter and respond to distress messages by passengers. (As) the volume of messages shot up, I made it mandatory for all general managers and divisional railway managers to use Twitter and connect with passengers. They put in place systems to respond to the passengers’ distress messages,” said Mr Prabhu, who added that the Railway Board has also put in place an elaborate cell for this purpose.