Focus on Bangladesh Railway

The government has recently created a separate ministry for the railways. What prompted the government to make a new ministry is not known. It could be just to accommodate a leader of the ruling Awami League or to provide the much-needed facelift to the hitherto neglected Bangladesh Railway (BR) or both. If the government's move is aimed at improving the BR's operations, the people should have reasons to express guarded optimism for there always remains a wide gap between words and deeds of the government in this part of the world. Men in power in the past had promised improvements in the condition of the BR, but they failed to deliver results. The non-fulfilment of promises has resulted in the BR's conditions going from bad to worse. The railway is still considered a cheap and comfortable mode of transportation across the world. But in Bangladesh, it is cheap, no doubt, but not at all comfortable. The very name of railway in Bangladesh evokes among the travelling people a picture that is not at all palatable; worn-out passenger carriages and locomotives, ill-maintained railway stations and highly erratic departure and arrival time schedule of trains. And travelling without tickets, courtesy of a section of dishonest BR employees continues to be a dominating feature. In most cases, most people here avoid train journey except for the festival times, particularly during the celebration of two Eids when reaching home gets priority over comfort. Homebound people are seen making long queues for train tickets before Eid festivals and during normal times they avoid journey by trains. The lacklustre state of the BR is evident from its annual balance sheets, which has been in the red since 1995-96 fiscal. In fact, the loss being incurred by the state railway has been rising steadily in recent years. In the fiscal 2010-11, the BR suffered a financial loss of Tk. 7.33 billion. One of the major reasons behind the BR incurring losses remains to be its unchanged fare-chart for years together despite the fact that the price of diesel was adjusted upward, at least, on 17 occasions during that period. The authorities might have refrained from hiking the fares out of the fear that the BR's earning would fall further as more and more people avoid journey by trains in the event of a fare-hike. Against the backdrop of a substantial rise in the number of people moving from one place to another for economic or other reasons during the last two decades or so, the situation with the BR should have been altogether different. But the BR, sadly enough, has failed to take a fair share of the huge daily passenger traffic. The way the passengers of inter-district buses suffer due to traffic congestions on highways and delays in availing ferries, the railway should have been an attractive alternative before them. For instance, it now takes 10 to 12 hours for a traveler to reach Chittagong from Dhaka, mainly due to traffic gridlocks on highways. But if a train maintains its schedule strictly, it can easily cross the distance in just five hours. But lack of timeliness, ramshackle state of passenger carriages etc., make the trains the least wanted mode of transportation to middle and high income passengers. The main reason for the BR's decline lies in lack of proper attention on the part of the successive governments. Funds worth billions have been spent on the development of road infrastructures over the years. But the government behaved miserly as far as the improvement of BR is concerned. In fact, a fraction of the amount spent on road infrastructures would have been enough to ensure an acceptable level of improvement of the BR. Mr. Suranjit Sengupta MP, soon after taking over the charge of the ministry of railways said its top-most priority would be to ensure strict maintenance of time-schedule of trains. That is important, no doubt. But no less import is the replacement of the existing passenger carriages and locomotives with new ones. The prevailing situation necessitates a radical improvement in the operations of the BR. Following the creation of the ministry of railways, some people have started talking about the need for preparing a separate budget for the railway which was in existence some years back. But a separate budget could not anyway stop the decline of the BR. So, how the government allocates fund, within or outside the integrated budget, is not that important. The size of the annual allocation and its planned and proper use remain to be the critical factors here. The improvement of railway cannot be done overnight since implementation of projects and programmes in this area takes a little bit of time. Moreover, the BR is a state organisation that owns prime land areas in Dhaka, Chittagong and other areas of the country. These areas have remained unutilised. Through planned use or sale of the same, the BR can earn a sizeable amount that could be used for its much-desired improvement.