{"id":240098,"date":"2023-04-28T20:29:51","date_gmt":"2023-04-28T14:59:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=240098"},"modified":"2023-05-02T16:44:16","modified_gmt":"2023-05-02T11:14:16","slug":"not-by-vande-bharat-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/not-by-vande-bharat-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"Not by \u2018Vande Bharat\u2019 alone"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Source-<\/strong> The post is based on the article \u201cNot by \u2018Vande Bharat\u2019 alone\u201d published in \u201cThe Hindu\u201d on 28th April 2023.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Syllabus: <\/strong>GS3- Infrastructure<\/p>\n<p><strong>Relevance<\/strong>&#8211; Issues related to railway<\/p>\n<p><strong>News<\/strong>&#8211; The article explains the overemphasis on Vande Bharat trains<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What are the issues with railways in India?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The <strong>Annual Plan outlay <\/strong>of the Indian Railways was \u20b91,09,935 crore in 2016-17 in the last Railway Budget. It has increased to \u20b92,60,200 crore in the Budget for 2023-24. This is an <strong>increase of 137% <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>unprecedented levels of investment to build rail infrastructure are a welcome development. But these investments must translate into <strong>concrete progress towards capacity building. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There are issues related to <strong>passenger and freight traffic.<\/strong> The<strong> rail share of freight <\/strong>carried was reduced from 51.5.% in 2008-09 to 32.4% in 2018-19 for leads over 300 km. Almost the entire increase in volume of traffic carried by rail over the decade 2008-09 to 2018-19 has been in <strong>short lead traffic. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>55% of the increase was through the transport of just one commodity, that is coal. The higher levels of traffic being achieved is not accompanied by <strong>diversification of commodities. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There are issues related to <strong>punctuality. <\/strong>Published statistics for punctuality usually are above 90%. But these figures are adjusted and only the <strong>destination arrival time<\/strong> is considered.<\/p>\n<p>More than a decade ago, an exercise was undertaken to know the status of all passenger trains in the Indian Railways network on a real time basis. The punctuality of all passenger-carrying trains at any given time hovered around 60%.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What is the way forward to improve the performance of the Indian railway?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The<strong> National Rail Plan 2030<\/strong> envisages raising the rail share in freight traffic <em>vis-\u00e0-vis<\/em> roadways from 27% to 45% by 2050. It calls for raising the<strong> average speed of goods trains<\/strong> to 50 kilometres per hour from the present 25 kmph and r<strong>eduction in tariff rates<\/strong> for freight by up to 30%.<\/p>\n<p>There is a need for a <strong>radical shift in punctuality<\/strong>. Stations in the Indian Railways network can be <strong>remodelled to \u2018international standards<\/strong>. <strong>Japanese Railways <\/strong>reckon the punctuality of their high-speed trains in seconds. The Indian Railways should aim to be at least within five minutes of the scheduled time.<\/p>\n<p>There is a need to move away from the <strong>traditional concept of destination punctuality<\/strong> and evolve an<strong> index of punctuality<\/strong> that will also reflect the punctuality at select intermediate stations. With developments in IT and data analytics, this should be possible.<\/p>\n<p>The government should consider tabling an<strong> annual report on the performance of the Railways<\/strong> in Parliament on the <strong>lines of the annual Economic Survey<\/strong> prepared by the Finance Ministry ahead of the General Budget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source- The post is based on the article \u201cNot by \u2018Vande Bharat\u2019 alone\u201d published in \u201cThe Hindu\u201d on 28th April 2023. Syllabus: GS3- Infrastructure Relevance&#8211; Issues related to railway News&#8211; The article explains the overemphasis on Vande Bharat trains What are the issues with railways in India? The Annual Plan outlay of the Indian Railways&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/not-by-vande-bharat-alone\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Not by \u2018Vande Bharat\u2019 alone<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10320,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1230,9],"tags":[216,10498,9436],"class_list":["post-240098","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-9-pm-daily-articles","category-public","tag-gs-paper-3","tag-the-hindu","tag-vande-bharat-trains","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240098","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10320"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240098"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240098\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240098"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240098"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240098"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}