A dream derailed
The Konkan Railway, touted as a ‘national project’, is now a national disaster, says ANTHONY J SIMOES
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In 1990, when the Konkan Railway Corporation (KRC) was registered with the Registrar of Companies, a lot of people in the Konkan were thrilled that one of their pressing needs would soon be fulfilled. They were promised a railroad from Roha to Mangalore by 1994. The rail travel distance between Mumbai and Kerala would be reduced by about 1,000 km, as compared to the existing route. Districts like Raigad, Ratnagiri, Sindhudurg, Uttara Kannada and Dakshina Kannda, which were hitherto untouched by railways and isolated, would now be connected, by a quantum leap, to the mainstream.
The KRC’s advertising and public relations machinery went into top gear to manipulate the media. They spared no expense to generate media hype. Soon, they had the media eating and drinking out of their hands. Superlatives were all over the place: ‘Dream come true’, ‘National Project’, ‘Wonder of the World’, ‘Engineering Marvel’… The print media was soon flooded with articles about 120 trains per day operating on the KRC tracks at 160 kmph. There would be no level crossings, only grade separators (overbridges and underbridges), to run high-speed of trains with total safety for road traffic and pedestrians.
We were all regaled with grandiose stories and statistics, to confirm the Konkan Railway’s ‘engineering marvel’ credentials. For example, the Panvel Nadi viaduct would be supported on 64-metre-high piers – as high as the Kutub Minar. The 6.5km-long Karbudhe Tunnel, when completed, would be the longest tunnel in Asia! And all this would be done in four years, at a low cost of just Rs1,042 crore.
At this point in time, there were many knowledgeable people who expressed serious doubts about the economic viability and environmental impact of the KR, given the alignment chosen to suit the design parameters. Even the safety of the railroad would be suspect, because of the unstable terrain on the alignment chosen by the KRC. People like V M Pai Panandikar, Dr Kesavan Nair, Dr Nandakumar Kamat, Dr Claude Alvares and Dr Madhav Gadgil predicted a monumental disaster was in the making, but they were shouted down by a well-oiled mercenary media machinery mobilised by the KRC.
In fact, in Goa, they hired the services of a full-time media consultant; a senior Goan journalist was tasked with the job of wining, dining, gifting and herding media persons into publicising KRC press statements. No matter how bizarre and unrealistic their claims, critics of the KR were variously labelled as Luddite, anti-national, anti-development, communal and corrupt agents of the truck and bus lobbies.
The Konkan Railway was ‘commissioned’ on 26 January 1998, amid much fanfare and media hype. The media, in their ‘enthusiasm’, forgot to mention that the inaugural ceremony was delayed by five hours because the inaugural train got derailed at the entrance to a tunnel!
Today, all the dire predictions of the naysayers have come true. Instead of Rs1,042 crore, the cost has run up to about Rs11,000 crore. Cumulative losses are eight times the original equity, and they have been subsidised to the tune of Rs350 crore per year for the last 12 years. This subsidy, combined with overcharging passengers by a staggering 40 per cent, is what keeps the KRC’s damaged nose above water.
Instead of running 120 trains per day, they are now running 120 trains per week. There are dozens of level crossings against their promise of none. Instead of trains hurtling at 160 kmph, we have average speeds of less than 80 kmph. In any case, the KRC has laid a ‘B’ class permanent way, instead of ‘A’ class as required by the Indian Railway Engineering Code (IREC) for running trains at 160 kmph.
Recently, the KRC introduced a special new service between Mumbai CST and Madgaon stations, with a minimum number of stops along the way. Even though the inaugural train averaged only 66 kmph, the KRC PRO got the media to call this train a ‘super-fast train’!
Every year since 1998, the train services have been disrupted between June and September. As it is, the timetables are changed for the monsoon and nearly two hours extra of running time is added between Goa and Mumbai. Despite this, trains are delayed by up to 10 hours, and services regularly get disrupted/stopped for days, sometimes even for weeks. There have been over 600 rock falls and formation/cutting collapses since the KR’s ‘commissioning’.
As for financial juggling and creative accounting, the less said the better. Three years ago, the KR’s debt was Rs5,642 crore, against an equity of just Rs803 crore. So the KRC took the Rs2,687 crore unsecured component of the debt and turned it into equity. This means the original shareholders – the Indian Railways and the state governments of Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Kerala – now own only 25 per cent of the equity, compared to 100 per cent earlier.
This project was taken-up on a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) basis, with the ‘Build’ phase from 1990 to 1994, the ‘Operate’ phase from 1994 to 2004 and the ‘Transfer’ – handing over a financial asset to the Chairman of the Railway Board to be incorporated into the Indian Railways network, thereafter.
But today, the Indian Railways is not willing to touch the Konkan Railway with a bargepole. Financially, the KR is an unmitigated disaster. Nearly 13 years after its ‘commissioning’, it is losing Rs1.5 crore per day, with no hope of a turnaround, since its debt-equity ratio has already crossed 9:1. The Konkan Railway is a financial black hole.
Every so often, the KRC feeds the media with a red herring about doubling the track, which is impossible. All the 92 tunnels and 179 major bridges are built to accommodate only one track. How can they be widened? Especially long tunnels like Karbudhe (6.5km), Nathuwadi (4.4km) and Barcem (3.4km); long bridges like Sharavati (2km) and Zuari (nearly 1 km); and the Panvel Nadi Viaduct which is 67 metres above the hillside and connects tunnels at both ends, cannot be widened without enormous expenditure.
I was amazed to read Edgar Ribeiro and Charles Correia’s suggestion in RP2021 that the KR track be doubled. Edgar Ribeiro should know better; his was the main affidavit opposing the KR alignment at the Justice Oza Commission hearings. Does he have a short memory or is he trying to take us for a ride?
This ‘dream’ has become a nightmare. This ‘national project’ is now a national disaster. This ‘wonder of the world’ is now a blunder of the world. Who is responsible for this fiasco?
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Bugged by Bugs
Dr Pradeep V Kamat
Over the years we have been hearing about supercomputers, supermen, supernova, superstars (Bollywood), supermarkets, supersonic jets, et al. But of late, a super bug is creating ripples in India and abroad. Patients afflicted by this bug have a dim chance of recovery, as it brings about multi-organ failure .The European scientists were quick enough to name the strain after India’s capital, New Delhi. The bug NDM1 (New Delhi Metalo beta lactamase; a sister concern of H1N1?) is the latest impossible-to-treat bacterium in this powerful world of superbugs. It can destroy even Carbapenums, the antibiotics-of-last-resort available at present.
Naming a disease or a bug after a city or a country (especially poor or third-world) is not a new phenomenon. We have a plethora of diseases named down the ages after places. For instance, we have Ebola Haemorragic Fever (Sudan), African Sleeping Syndrome, Bornholm disease, Lyme disease (Connecticut, USA), Brooklyn eye, Aides Egyptii… to name a few. Even westerners who get a bad stomach when they visit India call it the ‘Delhi Belly’ syndrome. But can their Indian counterparts dare to talk about a ‘London Abdomen’ when in England?
Coming back to the point, bugs are ubiquitous to say the least. They are omnipotent and omnipresent. ‘Bug’ is a loosely used term to describe any microbial agent like bacteria, virus, fungus, etc, or even a disease-carrying vector. In fact, we are surrounded by millions of different kinds of such bugs. They have been around much before the human race. By Darwin’s evolutionary process, we have become immune to most of them. And there are other, more real bugs; like the household bed bugs that drive us crazy at night, and the bugs affecting crops that give farmers sleepless nights.
Sometimes the word bug is used routinely in other fields to indicate its disastrous effects. A computer bug, for example can completely derange the programmes and can eat up your files. The cancer bug spread its tentacles like a crab (the symbolism creates the name).
When money, power and fame goes to a person’s head and makes them arrogant, they are said to be afflicted by the ‘super-ego’ bug. A mental bug drives one crazy and schizophrenic, and requires psychiatric treatment. Planting bugs in cars or rooms, or bugging a telephone is a handy tool for detective agencies and the Crime Branch to expose criminals or solve a mystery. Scientists and astronomers are always in search of bugs in outer space, so that they can find life beyond Earth.
Since we are talking about different types of bugs, another mega-bug which has bogged us down is the corruption bug. It is a super-bug that seems to have absolutely no cure and is eating up the vitals of our country inside out, and killing our time-honoured traditions. In our country, it is found almost everywhere and it is spreading at a very rapid pace.
All the other bugs mentioned above can be overpowered. Computer bugs can be tackled by installing the latest antivirus software. Modern pesticides against insect bugs can save millions of tonnes of foodgrains, vegetables and fruits. Nowadays, one doesn’t find bed bugs so commonly. There are newer lines of treatments for cancer. The DOT treatment for TB has brought about a sea change over previous strategies for tackling this disease. We still have weapons to kill bacteria, virus and fungi, developed over a period of time. Antibiotic therapy saves millions of lives each day. Vaccines have prevented so many diseases, and brought about the global eradication of some, like Smallpox.
There have been so many discoveries in the recent past in the field of bacteriology and pharmacology. Even the superbug NDM1 is susceptible to two types of antibiotics and, one day, research by scientists will create a breakthrough to tackle antibiotic resistance, just as they did with Swine Flu. But a remedy for this powerful and lethal ‘corruption super bug’ is nowhere in sight…
