It sounds curious that the Railway ministry has unveiled plans for Bullet Train routes in seven more sectors, while it’s still not addressing the real long-distance routes linking any two of the four top metropolitan cities. This is happening even as the first “pilot” project set in motion by the Narendra Modi government in 2016 between Ahmedabad and Mumbai has not materialized 11 years later. The promise now is that a 50 km stretch – one-tenth of the total 500-km distance, between Surat and Billimoria—will be ready by August next year. The plan includes bullet trains between Mumbai-Pune, Pune-Hyderabad, Hyderabad-Bengaluru, Hyderabad-Chennai, Chennai-Bengaluru, Delhi-Varanasi and Varanasi-Siliguri. The North-East sector has not been included, while the long haul routes from the national capital to Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and vice-versa, or the routes in between these big cities have not been addressed. In other words, Indian Railways is not ready yet to roll out the bullet train project at a wider national level.
The 12 years of Modi governance have not significantly helped the Railway sector grow, while the national highway and roads sector saw impressive modernization. Mass Rapid Rail Systems are equally important between and within cities to reduce pressure on roads and save precious fuel. Instead, the nation pays dearly to purchase crude from abroad to meet road transportation requirements. The proliferation of vehicles – with many families now owning up to five vehicles for domestic use – is the result also of the neglect of the railway sector that continued through successive governments. India has only around 20 mass rapid transport systems, such as Metro Rail, while there are about 8,000 urban settlements. When Modi started his term as PM in 2014, his promise apart from Bullet trains (originally mooted by the UPA-II), was high-speed rail connectivity between six major metropolises. Vande Bharat is a significant improvement in both travel quality and speed, but only around 80 such trains exist, mostly for travel between nearby cities. The operational speed is still no more than around 100km per hour, compared to the promised bullet train speed of 300km. Most Indian trains run at speeds of less than 80km per hour – a shame on the nation that fails to grow with speed, grit and determination.
An inefficient bureaucracy that sits on files and leaders without a sense of purpose or speed join hands to retard the nation’s progress; this is spectacularly reflected in matters like railway development. Corruption is coupled with this, resulting in a grim scenario. The long delay suffered by a pilot project like the Ahmedabad-Mumbai initiative is also due to a change of government in Mumbai, in between, when the BJP was removed from power and the NCP-Shiv Sena-Congress dispensation suspended its part of the project work. Its revival came after the BJP regained power there. In Gujarat, where the BJP ruled during all these 12 years, the project’s progress was better, but not impressive enough.
