How Minister Mamata made the Railway Board chief eat his words

How Minister Mamata made the Railway Board chief eat his words
SUNIL JAIN & BHAVNA VIJ

NEW DELHI, OCTOBER 10: What do you do if you're the Chairman of the Railway Board and the minister, in this case the mercurial Mamata Banerjee, wants you to increase your procurement targets for railway wagons despite your fellow board members' opposition?

Simple: you try and put it in the minutes of the meeting, to make it clear that the suggestion is coming from the office of the minister in whose state the country's wagon producers are mainly located. And then, as happened with the newly-appointed Railway Board Chief Ashok Kumar, if the minister blows a fuse at the inclusion of her office in the minutes, you simply put white correction fluid on the reference to the minister's office.

For the record, the Railway Board has denied the allegations, but more of that later, as The Indian Express has a copy of the minutes of the meeting as well as the notes that preceded it.

The story begins in May this year, when the Traffic Directorate estimated that the railways would need 18,000 wagons for the year 2001-02. This was based on the normal attrition of the existing fleet, and new traffic demand that was likely to arise.

Curiously, on June 13, the additional member (railway stores) N. Sahu, who has no business with the demand projections (these are the domain of the traffic office), decided that this may be increased by 2,000 more wagons -- ``as per policy 1 per cent incremental traffic is to be captured from road and therefore, planning of wagons should be done keeping in view this aspect as well.'' He then left this suggestion to the Board to ratify.

The file then goes back to the traffic department to ratify, and on July 1, the additional member (traffic) Swarup Gupta says the suggestion is so much nonsense. He says that against the 9th plan target of the railways carrying 525 million tonnes of freight, the railways would be lucky to reach 490 million. He says the requirement for new wagons could fall even more thanks to more modern wagons, but in any case, 18,000 wagons is the maximum required. And yes, to wrest 1 per cent market share from the road annually, the railways will require to grow at 8.4 per cent annually for the next decade as against 3.5 per cent now.

This is then okayed during the following week by the additional member finance, and the member (traffic) Shanti Narain.

In mid-July, Finance Commissioner P. Vasudevan decides the traffic projections are too low. He repeats the need to wrest back a 10-per cent share from the roads sector over the decade, and proposes 20,000 wagons be bought.

A meeting is then held on September 16 between Mamata Bannerjee and the Chairman Railway Board, the Finance Commissioner, and the Member Traffic.

What happened during the meeting is not too clear, but when Ashok Kumar, the Chairman of the Railway Board sent the file to Mamata, it clearly stated that the member traffic was of the view that 18,000 wagons should be purchased, while the finance commissioner was of the view that 20,000 should be bought.

It also said that ``PS to MR'' (that's Minister of Railways) ``suggested that we may finalise tenders for ... 23,000 wagons.'' Later, after the file was first sent to Mamata and returned to Ashok Kumar, the ``PS to MR'' was covered with correction fluid -- this was replaced by a vague ``it was suggested ... 23,000 wagons.'' Who ``it'' is, is not specified.

Where did this mention of 23,000 wagons suddenly come from? In a faxed reply to The Indian Express, the Chairman Railway Board has chosen to give an altogether different spin to the episode. While saying that important decisions ``are not taken at the level of PS to MR'', he says railway freight has exceeded the target in the first five months of the year, that the railways have to wrest back a 1 per cent share each year. He adds that certain wagons will have to be replaced earlier for safety reasons -- so, despite the fact that the railway freight will be much lower than the original target, it still needs the 23,000 wagons.

Never once, however, does Kumar explain why none of this was taken into account by the traffic directorate which is in charge of demand forecasting, or how the 23,000-wagons figure enters the discussion only during the meeting with Mamata Banerjee.