{"id":34580,"date":"2018-10-31T12:02:13","date_gmt":"2018-10-31T06:32:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.forumias.com\/?p=34580"},"modified":"2018-10-31T12:02:13","modified_gmt":"2018-10-31T06:32:13","slug":"railway-board-takes-up-safety-measures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/railway-board-takes-up-safety-measures\/","title":{"rendered":"Railway Board takes up safety measures:\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/todays-paper\/tp-national\/railway-board-takes-up-safety-measures\/article19867990.ece\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Railway Board takes up safety measures<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Context:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With consecutive rail accidents, the Indian Railways is planning a series of steps to improve the safety of rail tracks.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It includes automated inspections and frequent traffic blocks for maintenance. <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>What are the problems faced by Indian Railways?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Indian Railways is the fifth biggest rail network in the world with 1.3 million employees and it is a massive task to streamline its operations.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Different Union governments and railway ministers have commissioned multiple studies on what ails the Railways. Some of them are as below:<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The <\/span><b>discrepancy between cargo charges and passenger fares<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> seem to distort the Railways&#8217; performance. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Indian railway has a centralised organisation with hierarchical decision-making. As a result, even <\/span><b>simple decisions take years to resolve<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Indian Railways spends heavily on revenue expenditure and there <\/span><b>is little left for capital expenditure<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. <\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> In the previous year, the Indian Railways <\/span><b>missed most of its targets<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, including of electrification, track renewals, bridge works, and doubling of tracks.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Railway Budget: An overview:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As part of the radical rethinking on <\/span><b>improving the country\u2019s transportation architecture<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, a combined budget has been presented on after the merger of the railway budget with the Union budget.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The merger of Railway Budget with General Budget is based on the recommendations of the Committee of the NITI Aayog and a separate paper on \u2018Dispensing with the Railway Budget\u2019.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Salient features of Merger are as follows:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ministry of Railways will continue to<\/span><b> function as a departmentally run commercial undertaking<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A<\/span><b> separate Statement of Budget Estimates and Demand for Grant <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">will be created for Railways;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A<\/span><b> single Appropriation Bill, including the estimates of Railways,<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> will be prepared and presented by Ministry of Finance to Parliament;<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The presentation of a unified budget will help <\/span><b>present a holistic picture of the financial position <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">of the Government; and<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Merger of Rail Budget with Union Budget would<\/span><b> facilitate multimodal transport planning<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> between highways, railways and inland waterways.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>Key initiatives of the unified budget are as follows:<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">India will invest as much as Rs3, 96,135 crore in <\/span><b>creating and upgrading infrastructure<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the next financial year.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As part of the <\/span><b>new integrated infrastructure planning paradigm comprising roads, railways, waterways and civil aviation<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, the National Democratic Alliance government unveiled the largest-ever rail budget<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The set of initiatives announced seem <\/span><b>to acknowledge the challenge that Railways is losing share in both freight and premium passenger service<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> Integrated approach to improving safety, cleanliness and passenger comfort, and higher levels of service to freight customers through end to end services has also been introduced in this budget.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Indian Railways will also <\/span><b>list its subsidiaries<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u2014Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, Indian Railway Finance Corporation and Ircon International Ltd.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>What is the way ahead?<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The recent decision of <\/span><b>surge pricing of tickets in premium trains<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is a move in a correct direction to encounter the challenge of freight charges.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Indian Railways <\/span><b>need to generate enough funds<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> on its own for capital expenditure.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It also needs to <\/span><b>find non-government sources of funding<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in order to witness a noticeable change.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Recently,<\/span><b> privatisation<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> is recommended as the panacea of Indian railways. \u00a0It can prove to be efficient through more profit making models.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Railway Board takes up safety measures:\u00a0 Context: With consecutive rail accidents, the Indian Railways is planning a series of steps to improve the safety of rail tracks. It includes automated inspections and frequent traffic blocks for maintenance. What are the problems faced by Indian Railways? Indian Railways is the fifth biggest rail network in the&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/railway-board-takes-up-safety-measures\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Railway Board takes up safety measures:\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[555],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-test-1","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","views":{"total":0,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1704922087},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34580","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\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forumias.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}