Vande Bharat: Good idea, bad planning?

By the look of it, the Vande Bharat trains will transform the rail travel experience in India. Along with its existing network of 67,368 route kilometres, passenger trains in India log an approximate Passenger Kilometre or PKM (unit of measurement equivalent to transporting a passenger over a distance of one kilometre) of 600,000 million. Of this, 300,000 million constitute non-suburban traffic, while the reserved category amounts to 100,000 million. 

If the target of running 400 Vande Bharat trains by 2025 is achieved, these trains will have a capacity of an annual PKM of 153,300 million - or 150% more than the current capacity for air-conditioned train travel. 

In other words, there will be enough space for passengers wanting to travel in the air-conditioned and energy-efficient as Vande Bharat trains will be dashing along India's rail network by 2025 at speeds of 160 kmph. Passenger trains currently clock a maximum speed of 130 kmph and run at an average speed of 52-55 kmph. 

Unfortunately, the picture is much less rosy, given the past record of the Indian Railways in the delivery of projects. 

The national project to build the Udhampur Srinagar Baramulla Rail Link (USBRL) has been gathering huge time and cost escalations, while frequent reports of tunnel construction disasters have been coming in. 

The Mumbai Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail project has similarly been accumulating time and cost overruns because of the Maharashtra government's unenthusiastic response. Contracts have yet to be awarded for the train collision avoidance systems, named as the Kawach - announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in this year's budget. 

While the Union Government claims to have pumped in multiple times more funds towards upgrade of tracks and signalling systems since 2014, a qualitative change in the train travel experience has not been visible. 

In a recent report, the Comptroller and Auditor General slammed the Indian Railways for failing to ramp up train speeds despite having spent an estimated Rs. 250,000 crores on infrastructure improvement.
 
The good and bad news

The good news is that three years after the launch of the first indigenously developed Vande Bharat trains, the third rake will be put in service in June. Orders for the manufacturing of 102 additional trains (all chair cars) have also been placed on seven firms including Bombardier and Siemens. Building of additional facility, Railway Manpower and simulator etc. are part of a third tender of 200 complete trainsets.

The two companies had not participated in the first bid last year for the manufacture of 44 rakes, having disagreements over the tender conditions that required them to supply bogeys and wheels as well, apart from the propulsion systems. 

With global train manufacturers being usually sceptical of getting involved in ancillary activities such as bogey or wheel manufacture, the first tender for the manufacture of 44 train sets had been awarded to a domestic firm called the Medha Servo Drives. While the second tender for 58 trains floated last March does not entail similar clauses, other problems have emerged.

Tender conditions require that the private players use and also build additional facilities at the existing railway production units for the manufacture of the Vande Bharat trains. The selected private vendors will be responsible for design, maintenance, supply testing and commissioning of the train sets. They will also be required to install motion-based driving simulators for the training of loco pilots.

More responsibilities, less freedom

While the private players have been vested with greater responsibility, certain HR issues have remained unresolved: Whether manpower and engineering staff will also be provided by the Indian Railways? How will the Transfer of Technology happen? 

"Because of such issues, the project can get delayed", former Railways Officer SK Luthra said. 

Aligning with the thought, a senior ministry official said that the dual charge in train manufacture was already causing delays in "downstream activities" such as the manufacturing of panel boxes and electrical parts. 

Former General Manager of the Chennai-based Integral Coach Factory, Sudhanshu Mani - known as the inventor of the T-18 or the Vande Bharat - flags a different concern. "Having more than one contract is desirable. But IR has approved seven suppliers in the second contract for 58 train sets. This can cause confusion, leading to execution delays", Mani said.