The long-ailing Indian Railways now has a reason to cheer. The second version of the semi-high-speed train manufactured under PM Modi’s ambitious Make In India initiative claims to have registered a speed of 180km per hour when it did a test-run on the Ahmedabad-Mumbai route. In actual run, this could be much less. India’s fastest train, Gatiman Express, built to run at 160kmph, has average speed of only 115kmph; which itself was due to significant improvements in speed effected by the Modi terms in eight years. Till then, the maximum train speed here was around 70kmph. Speed has to do with the make of the train, technicalities, and the compatibility of the tracks. Major improvements in the ageing tracks and technology are important also in terms of ensuring passenger safety.
The first concern of the Railway ministry since Modi took charge in 2014 had been of improving safety; and the accidents on the railways have largely reduced. At the same time, the two terms of the Modi government did not register any impressive growth for the Railways. Trains now run in China with Magnetic Levitation technology –Maglev –at a speed of 600km per hour; Japan’s bullet trains ran at a speed of over 300kmph for the past over two decades. Trains in South Korea run at 350 kmph. India, thus, is still in the old league. Modi had promised bullet trains for India between Ahmedabad and Mumbai, to start with, but this is yet to materialize.
While the Vande Bharat attempt is appreciable, this also raises a question mark on the Make In India initiative in terms of quality. For one, the coaches built by the state-owned Integral Coach Factory, Tamil Nadu, lacks class – set against the modern trains in Asia, Europe and much of the rest of the world. They even look archaic with only marginal changes in design. The coach factory in Kapurthala also produces old-fashioned rakes. This is why efforts by India to win train export orders even from nations like Nepal did not gain traction. So too with the attempts made with poor Latin American countries. They were not impressed. A quality product will have takers. When quality is a casualty, no marketing push can help. This is a problem with all our state-owned enterprises. The incompetence of those who fashion trains like Vande Bharat is legion. The argument is, the cost of production of these trains, also styled as Train 18, was cheap – some 40 per cent less compared to trains from Europe. Big question is, who is impressed?
