The Inclusiveness Story told on The Rapid Indian Railways

THE RECENTLY concluded 57th National Development Council witnessed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh noting some of his observations about inclusiveness in the Indian union. Going forward he noted that,

Rapid growth also contributes directly to inclusiveness because it provides greater access to income and employment opportunities. Policies aimed at stimulating growth in agriculture and in medium and small industries, combined with steps to promote education and skill development, will produce a growth process which is inherently more inclusive.

Rapid growth, as noted above, plays a vital role in achieving higher inclusiveness indeed. But the reason growth has to be rapid in order to achieve inclusiveness is that the whole process of inclusiveness, at a larger scale, is all about a race - race towards modernization, towards beating the one ahead of you. However, at an 'India' scale, which is large enough too, the race is towards relative modernization, and a race towards beating the State ahead of yours.

Competition is the essence of this race, and the Indian union has to allow this race to take place between Indian States. It cannot take part in the race as a proxy to the non-performing States, perhaps only to disprove the classical allegation that the the rich States got richer and the poor States got poorer. The central government need only be a neutral arbiter to ensure a fair race for all States, and perhaps protect, within reasonable limit, the interest of our States from out-of-scale competition from beyond the national borders. It is sad however, that the very existence of the Planning Commission and its modus operandi look oriented in such fashion so as to make Government of India (GoI) not only a lone proxy for all non-performing states, but also dictate terms of the race altogether! This is not only driving our States into a wrong race, but also jeopardizing their chances of winning the real race.

Railways Overloaded by being Indian?

There are many parameters that act as enablers for each competitor in this race. Today, most such parameters are either directly or indirectly controlled by the GoI. Take the railways for instance. It is shocking to know that the GoI has only added about 15% of rail lines in the last 62 years after having inherited the rest 85%. Railways, that have triggered rapid growth in many countries worldwide, have failed to do the magic in India, thanks to such a bulky administrative and governance juggernaut it is after being centralized in the hands of the GoI.

A general look at the pace at which railway projects are undertaken in India explains how railways could even be having a degenerative effect on growth. Specifically, this example of a railway line doubling between the cities of Mysore and Bangalore initially slated to take 24 months now remains doubtful of completion even after 42 months, quoting petty operational flaws as reasons:

However, if the state government hands over land in Mandya, Maddur and Srirangapatna, the work of electrification and doubling could be completed within six months, he added.

A perfect case for decentralization - Railways remains an unquestioned union list item and the States feature in the deal only when they have to part with their capital and revenue assets in the national interest of laying 10000 kms of railway lines in 62 long years! If that speaks about the inability of a central government in using railways to rapidly grow a vast diverse nation like India, the disturbing skew in delivery, of electrified rail in this case, between different States of India speaks for states like Karnataka and Gujarat that are begging for more efficient (electrified) mode of railway transport.

In a decentralized state of existence, each state would have paved its desirable set of internal rail network, meetings its own needs of rapid growth and competing at the global level.

Overall, it would be an over simplification of the inclusiveness problem to believe there can be one central authority (call it the Planning Commission) making an inclusiveness plan for entire of India. Development of this country is necessarily a cooperative endeavor involving the private and public sectors. Hence, it is important that the central government realizes that a cooperative endeavor cannot be undertaken with a hierarchical master-slave engagement between Central & State governments. The goal of future NDCs had better be to foster a peer relation between the governments and create a decentralized environment for this partnership to achieve rapid growth.

(Previous post in this sequence: Moving the BIMARU under a Shining Skin)