ExpertDabbler

Can someone explain why it should take one hour to travel a distance of 6 kms?

“Aruppukottai Onnaaruba” (Aruppukottai –Rs.1.50 per ticket) bus conductors used to shout in front of their buses in Virudhunagar bus stand twenty five years back. Aruppukottai is a well known trading center in south tamil nadu. I recently traveled to Aruppukottai from my native and the fare is now Rs.5.50 per ticket. But this is the only discernible change that I could notice. Everything else - from people jumping via window grills to throwing towels to grab a seat has remained absolutely the same in these 25 years. Even the paint of ‘SRI JAYAVILAS’ buses have remained the same in a few cases. ‘SRI JAYAVILAS’ used to be the KPN equivalent for mofussil buses in the south.

Compare this to the strides made in telecommunication in India in the last twenty years. This is also the period when the lifestyles of the urban folks have undergone such a drastic change that NRI’s are seriously pondering R2I leaving behind the comforts of the developed world.

Next comes sectors like healthcare, which has undergone tremendous change for the elite. People from all over the world take their flights to India in pursuit of world class healthcare, for those who are willing to pay for it.

And there are some laggards where no matter rich or poor, urban or rural, all suffer since time immemorial and there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. Public transportation is one of them. If one had watched GANDHI, one would’ve noticed people traveling on train tops during pre-independence days. I am sure we can see people traveling on train tops even today in some parts of the country. So what is the improvement in all these 65 61 years of independence? From the overcrowded MTC buses in Chennai to the Mumbai sub-urban trains or to the overcrowded SRINIVASAs and SRI JAYAVILAS’ in semi-rural Tamil Nadu. The landscape may change, but the grimness is the same.

The critical differences between sectors like, say telecommunications and public transport are straightforward. Telecommunications was entirely at the behest of DoT, a central government undertaking while road transport has been a state subject. Telecommunications allowed the entry of private players while transportation is still at the behest of our state government run corporations except for railways which again has no private player.

I seriously do not understand why government should get into the business of operating buses. I also do not understand the logic of operating a bus between town A and B when a mini-bus or van run more frequently would help keep things agile and flexible.

Railways is definitely doing better than state run transport corporations primarily because they come under one ministry for the whole of India. But there is lot of scope for improvement there as well. For e.g Arupukottai is yet to come in the rail network, so does towns like Dharapuram in Erode district while Mel Maruvathur has a railway station where all the express trains ‘must’ stop. I don’t have anything against Bangaru Adigalar but I believe trade centers should have priority over Bhakti in a country like India – at least in matters like getting railway stations. I seriously think Laloo should hire a marketing manager to identify new, financially viable areas to be brought into the rail network.

The Chennai-Tirunelveli rail corridor, despite being one of the most lucrative sectors for the southern railways still handles all the traffic in a single track. Oh yeah we still run diesel engines for the most part. Oil is getting pretty cheap nowadays, right?

Another of my question is about market segmentation. Why not charge more from people who can afford to pay. Tatkal is a classic example and a great revenue earner for the railways. Charge more from those who book late. I am sure a special train with only 3 tier a/c coaches will fetch more revenues for the railways in sectors like Chennai-Coimbatore, Chennai-Bangalore, Chennai – Madurai on weekends while addressing the need of the passengers as well. I believe there are lot of cities like this in the rest of India. I hear people paying anywhere from Rs. 700 to Rs. 1000 on weekends to travel from Madurai to Chennai for omnibus tickets.

It’s easy to construe this post as one against the obvious infrastructure woes that India has now become notorious for and something we are addressing with all the golden quadilaterals and 6-lane highways. In fact, I tend to think things are not going to improve with golden quadilaterals and six-lane highways. It’s like saying the websites will get more user friendly if internet bandwidth goes up. I don’t think it works that way.

What we need is focus and strategic thinking at the highest level. Overhauling the public transport for passenger and freight traffic will have a tremendous impact on the economic progress of the small towns and villages much higher than the envisaged Rs.60,000 crore farm loan waiver.