Govt approves restructuring of Railway Board, unification of services

News:Union Cabinet has approved the restructuring of the Railway Board.

Facts:

About Railway Board:

• The Railway Board is the apex body of the Indian Railways which reports to the Parliament via the ministry of railways.At present,the railway board includes eight members.
• The Cabinet has now restructured the board.It will now consist of four members and chairperson.
• The chairperson will act as Chief Executive Officer(CEO) along with four members responsible for Infrastructure, Operations & Business Development, Rolling Stock and Finance respectively.

Merger of Services:

• The Union Cabinet has also approved the merger of the different cadres into a central service called the Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS).
• The modalities and unification of the services will be worked out by the Ministry of Railways in consultation with the Department of Personnel and Training.

Significance of this move:

• These reforms are aimed at ending departmentalisation of the mammoth organization that employees nearly 1.3 million people, second only to the strength of the Armed Forces.
• The Unification of services is aimed at ending departmentalism, promote smooth working of Railways, expedite decision making, create a coherent vision for organisation and promote rational decision making.
• Further,the unification of services had earlier been mooted by various committees for reforming Railways including – the Prakash Tandon Committee (1994), Rakesh Mohan Committee (2001), Sam Pitroda Committee (2012) and Bibek Debroy Committee (2015).