Private trains on Indian tracks by 2024 ..

The Chairman of the Indian Railway Board Pradeep Yadav recently made a very startling disclosure that Indians will soon be able to travel in luxury and comfort in private trains on Indian tracks by as early as 2024.

What are the questions people would ask the Railways ?

• Safety - would traveling public be offered better safety equipments and live monitoring of tracks to prevent accidents ?
• Security  - would the traveling public be more secure inside the train, especially single women passengers ?
• Passenger amenities - offer new and innovative amenities ?
• Luggage handling solutions - will innovation be brought here ?
• Costs - would privatisation hike up the costs and make rail travel prohibitively costly ?
• Availability of seats and capacity - to start with private operators would be working side-by-side with the Indian Railways augmenting the Railways capacity. Slowly as more trains and routes would be open to private firms, the competition would increase. 
• Reach - would private trains run on all sectors being run by IR now or only on profitable routes
• Number of players - how many private players would be allowed on any single route ?
• Are the railway tracks across the country capable of handling high speed trains ?
• What will happen to the existing employee base and how will they be retrenched ?

For the private players, the questions that need to be clarified by the government are as follows

• Entry parameters
• Exit parameters
• Minimum trains to be operated
• Minimum distance to be covered
• Minimum facilities to be provided
• Minimum stations to be serviced
• Minimum overhauling facilities
• Who will resolve mutual disputes with the Indian Railways that could arise ?

The steps would be akin to the liberalisation and privatisation plans for the telecom and air travel industry in India. The privatisation in the two above sectors has worked out smoothly. It has offered great benefits to the Indian public. Indian private telecom players now offer the world's ONLY FREE domestic telephone calls to any part of the country. Would railways privatisation also offer great prospect of service and travel to the Indian public ? 

Presently Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFC) between Delhi and Mumbai and Delhi and Kolkata already offer private freight trains for the past thirteen years. It is slowly picking up.

For Indian Railways, 62% of  revenues come from movement of freight and 38% from passenger movement transporting 8.26 billion passengers and 1.16 billion tonnes of freight for the year ending 2018. 

As an experiment on privatisation, IRCTC (a quasi govt agency under Railways) is offering two rakes called Tejas on private basis where each customer is given a Rs 25 lakh personal insurance, in addition the customer is given preferences on the pick-up and delivery of passengers and their luggage from homes to destination, including the type of food and the type of accommodation etc. The flexibility offered to the passenger is possible only because it is run as a private entity.

The entry of private trains is sure going to make our train rides in future more enjoyable.

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George..