Are railways being killed to aid bus and truck operators?
Monday, 17 May 2010
Maswood Alam Khan
IF any economist, or for that matter any conscious Bangladeshi citizen, is asked what could be our best and the cheapest mode of transportation she will unequivocally answer: Railway. But if there is a motion now placed in our parliament to solicit opinions from the law-makers as to the best mode of transportation for our country I can bet the last piece of my coin that there would be an overwhelming majority of votes in favour of roads and highways and doggedly against the railway. Can you guess why?
Yes, most of our policy makers have some interests, direct or indirect, in road vehicles. Many law makers or their close relations or their in proxies either own or operate road vehicles or derive some kinds of benefits from the businesses associated with the roads and highways. Some lobbyists and their protagonists are also milking the wealthy owners of buses and trucks in exchange of political backings. There are some powerful activists too who are making money by illegally occupying railway properties which they are afraid may be lost if the railway improves. Railway is a public enterprise and many of our people's representatives loath to spend their precious time imagining or thinking about social welfares like improvement of public transportation unless they themselves are directly or financially benefited.
There are four cardinal principles based on which both developing and developed countries stress importance on railways: (01) railways compared to highways take lesser quantity of land and space; (02) haulage cost of railway is the lowest compared to any other modes of transportation under the sun; (03) compared to road accidents mishaps in railways are very few and far between; and (04) railway, above all, is the greenest mode of transportation for its minimal contribution to environmental pollutions.
Considering the importance of preserving the global environment that has already been made fragile due to massive carbon emissions, the Swiss government has decided not to build in Switzerland any further highways, one of the main sources of environment pollutants, and has taken up an elaborate programme to improve and expand their railways as a part of upgrading their land-based transportation systems.
The railway network in India, our next-door neighbour, is the largest in the world. Unlike in our country there is a separate ministry in India for only railways and the Indian Railway Minister holds the third prestigious position, according to the warrant of precedence. Like national budget, regular debates on rail budget are held in the Indian parliament. The main mode of transportation in all the cities in India is railway. In Kolkata commuter trains shuttle at two-minute intervals and in Mumbai at five-minute intervals. About two million commuters shuttle everyday between their workplaces in Kolkata and their homes in different parts scattered all over West Bengal. The railway is the best gift the British colonial rulers had left behind in Indian subcontinent. India, as the saying goes, will collapse if their railway collapses.
In her budget announcement, India's minister for railways Ms Mamata Banerjee told that the railways should be used both as a tool to initiate economic growth and to unite all corners of her country as an act of social responsibility. A number of US $8.9 billion (Rs 414.26 billion) has been allocated for India's 2010-2011 railway budget. Indian Railway Vision 2020 -- the blueprint for unprecedented investments in the railway networks -- recommended Rs. 1.4 trillion per year for the next 10 years to improve and expand their railway systems. In addition to the extra 25,000 km of new lines that will make the Indian railway network total to 89,000 km, the Vision 2020 calls for an additional 33,000 km of different tracks like double and multiple track additions in both normal and electrified lines by the end of the decade. India is doggedly determined to become a global trailblazer in turning railways as the cheapest as well as the best mode of mass transportation with an eye to minimise environmental pollutions and to save energy costs.
Another SAARC member country Pakistan, with which Bangladesh has many similarities in operating railways, has also embarked upon a plan to bring back to life their neglected railways. As a part of their resurrection plan Karachi Circular Railway (KCR), which was closed eleven years back mainly due to conspiracies hatched by the owners of buses and trucks, is going to be opened soon, thanks to a soft loan of US $1.53 billion from the Japanese government to revitalise the three-line 121 km railway. Once opened, the KCR with computerised ticketing, automated ticket gates, vending machines, elevators at stations and modern signaling and telecommunications systems will facilitate 290 trains to ply everyday at six-minute intervals in each direction which will have a daily capacity of hauling 690,000 passengers.
Both the developed and developing nations all over the world are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to add more and more route-km of new railway lines and upgrade the old systems; whereas Bangladesh Railway has always been neglected by our successive governments on the ground that the sector incurs loss perennially. But no authority in our country did ever feel the necessity to dig deep to find out why such a vital sector should incur losses. The mystery, known to everybody, behind the losses is the silent conspiracy of the vested quarters, especially of the bus and truck operators, which are very powerful in the context of Bangladesh politics and who have always influenced the policy makers and even the railway authorities to adopt measures in terms of planning and implementation that must lead the railway to bleed and incur loss so that the railway is deemed too big a white elephant to take care of.
Whatever railway networks on the soil of Bangladesh were left during partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 has already been reduced by 50 per cent. Many railway tracks have been abandoned or left at the mercy of the thieves and looters. The pace of construction of the railway network on the soil of Bangladesh that was started during the British rule back on November 15, 1862 with the laying of 53.11 km. of broad gauge line between Darsana and Jagati of Kushtia district has been extremely slow after liberation of Bangladesh. Let alone expansion of rail network, according to statistics available, out of 387 railway stations 106 stations have already been closed. Though there are scores of approved and unapproved projects visible on papers, not more than 5.0 per cent of the projects have been completed.
The website of Bangladesh Railway is one of the funniest websites I have ever come across where one can find in the list of the major ongoing projects 'the number one project' mysteriously missing. The pages displayed in their website are not professionally designed to make the information understandable to a common visitor. There was no mention of the railway budget anywhere in the website and the list of projects, ambiguously marked as approved and unapproved, does not give a clear impression about when the projects were started or at all started or have been completed or how much of those projects are yet to be implemented. Many hyperlinks on the website, if clicked, will lead you either to blank pages or to 'pages under construction'. Though there is a hyperlinked header titled "Acts/Rules/ Regulations" prominently displayed on the front page of the website the linked page is completely blank.
The stumbling block in the development of Bangladesh Railway, according to the officials of the Railway Department, is the railways' dependence on the ministry of communication where any file about railway gathers dusts for months. Unless there is a separate Railway Ministry captained by a powerful minister, unless the government follows what India and other developing nations are doing to help improve their railways, unless there are hues and cries raised from the civil societies to break the unholy nexus of the vested interests who are trying to gag Bangladesh Railway to turn it into a white elephant, unless there is a revolution with a slogan of "Save Our Railway To Save Our Nation" and unless in Dhaka and other major cities train services running at 10-minute intervals are introduced on the existing railways by laying parallel tracks, the nation will have to pay a heavy premium to bear the astronomical costs on accounts of environment, intolerable traffic jams, drainage of public funds in building flyovers, roads and highways.
The writer can be reached at
e-mail: maswood@hotmail.com
IF any economist, or for that matter any conscious Bangladeshi citizen, is asked what could be our best and the cheapest mode of transportation she will unequivocally answer: Railway. But if there is a motion now placed in our parliament to solicit opinions from the law-makers as to the best mode of transportation for our country I can bet the last piece of my coin that there would be an overwhelming majority of votes in favour of roads and highways and doggedly against the railway. Can you guess why?
Yes, most of our policy makers have some interests, direct or indirect, in road vehicles. Many law makers or their close relations or their in proxies either own or operate road vehicles or derive some kinds of benefits from the businesses associated with the roads and highways. Some lobbyists and their protagonists are also milking the wealthy owners of buses and trucks in exchange of political backings. There are some powerful activists too who are making money by illegally occupying railway properties which they are afraid may be lost if the railway improves. Railway is a public enterprise and many of our people's representatives loath to spend their precious time imagining or thinking about social welfares like improvement of public transportation unless they themselves are directly or financially benefited.
There are four cardinal principles based on which both developing and developed countries stress importance on railways: (01) railways compared to highways take lesser quantity of land and space; (02) haulage cost of railway is the lowest compared to any other modes of transportation under the sun; (03) compared to road accidents mishaps in railways are very few and far between; and (04) railway, above all, is the greenest mode of transportation for its minimal contribution to environmental pollutions.
Considering the importance of preserving the global environment that has already been made fragile due to massive carbon emissions, the Swiss government has decided not to build in Switzerland any further highways, one of the main sources of environment pollutants, and has taken up an elaborate programme to improve and expand their railways as a part of upgrading their land-based transportation systems.
The railway network in India, our next-door neighbour, is the largest in the world. Unlike in our country there is a separate ministry in India for only railways and the Indian Railway Minister holds the third prestigious position, according to the warrant of precedence. Like national budget, regular debates on rail budget are held in the Indian parliament. The main mode of transportation in all the cities in India is railway. In Kolkata commuter trains shuttle at two-minute intervals and in Mumbai at five-minute intervals. About two million commuters shuttle everyday between their workplaces in Kolkata and their homes in different parts scattered all over West Bengal. The railway is the best gift the British colonial rulers had left behind in Indian subcontinent. India, as the saying goes, will collapse if their railway collapses.
In her budget announcement, India's minister for railways Ms Mamata Banerjee told that the railways should be used both as a tool to initiate economic growth and to unite all corners of her country as an act of social responsibility. A number of US $8.9 billion (Rs 414.26 billion) has been allocated for India's 2010-2011 railway budget. Indian Railway Vision 2020 -- the blueprint for unprecedented investments in the railway networks -- recommended Rs. 1.4 trillion per year for the next 10 years to improve and expand their railway systems. In addition to the extra 25,000 km of new lines that will make the Indian railway network total to 89,000 km, the Vision 2020 calls for an additional 33,000 km of different tracks like double and multiple track additions in both normal and electrified lines by the end of the decade. India is doggedly determined to become a global trailblazer in turning railways as the cheapest as well as the best mode of mass transportation with an eye to minimise environmental pollutions and to save energy costs.
Another SAARC member country Pakistan, with which Bangladesh has many similarities in operating railways, has also embarked upon a plan to bring back to life their neglected railways. As a part of their resurrection plan Karachi Circular Railway (KCR), which was closed eleven years back mainly due to conspiracies hatched by the owners of buses and trucks, is going to be opened soon, thanks to a soft loan of US $1.53 billion from the Japanese government to revitalise the three-line 121 km railway. Once opened, the KCR with computerised ticketing, automated ticket gates, vending machines, elevators at stations and modern signaling and telecommunications systems will facilitate 290 trains to ply everyday at six-minute intervals in each direction which will have a daily capacity of hauling 690,000 passengers.
Both the developed and developing nations all over the world are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to add more and more route-km of new railway lines and upgrade the old systems; whereas Bangladesh Railway has always been neglected by our successive governments on the ground that the sector incurs loss perennially. But no authority in our country did ever feel the necessity to dig deep to find out why such a vital sector should incur losses. The mystery, known to everybody, behind the losses is the silent conspiracy of the vested quarters, especially of the bus and truck operators, which are very powerful in the context of Bangladesh politics and who have always influenced the policy makers and even the railway authorities to adopt measures in terms of planning and implementation that must lead the railway to bleed and incur loss so that the railway is deemed too big a white elephant to take care of.
Whatever railway networks on the soil of Bangladesh were left during partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 has already been reduced by 50 per cent. Many railway tracks have been abandoned or left at the mercy of the thieves and looters. The pace of construction of the railway network on the soil of Bangladesh that was started during the British rule back on November 15, 1862 with the laying of 53.11 km. of broad gauge line between Darsana and Jagati of Kushtia district has been extremely slow after liberation of Bangladesh. Let alone expansion of rail network, according to statistics available, out of 387 railway stations 106 stations have already been closed. Though there are scores of approved and unapproved projects visible on papers, not more than 5.0 per cent of the projects have been completed.
The website of Bangladesh Railway is one of the funniest websites I have ever come across where one can find in the list of the major ongoing projects 'the number one project' mysteriously missing. The pages displayed in their website are not professionally designed to make the information understandable to a common visitor. There was no mention of the railway budget anywhere in the website and the list of projects, ambiguously marked as approved and unapproved, does not give a clear impression about when the projects were started or at all started or have been completed or how much of those projects are yet to be implemented. Many hyperlinks on the website, if clicked, will lead you either to blank pages or to 'pages under construction'. Though there is a hyperlinked header titled "Acts/Rules/ Regulations" prominently displayed on the front page of the website the linked page is completely blank.
The stumbling block in the development of Bangladesh Railway, according to the officials of the Railway Department, is the railways' dependence on the ministry of communication where any file about railway gathers dusts for months. Unless there is a separate Railway Ministry captained by a powerful minister, unless the government follows what India and other developing nations are doing to help improve their railways, unless there are hues and cries raised from the civil societies to break the unholy nexus of the vested interests who are trying to gag Bangladesh Railway to turn it into a white elephant, unless there is a revolution with a slogan of "Save Our Railway To Save Our Nation" and unless in Dhaka and other major cities train services running at 10-minute intervals are introduced on the existing railways by laying parallel tracks, the nation will have to pay a heavy premium to bear the astronomical costs on accounts of environment, intolerable traffic jams, drainage of public funds in building flyovers, roads and highways.
The writer can be reached at
e-mail: maswood@hotmail.com