Saturday, October 14, 2006
Laloo, the management Guru or trickster?
IIM Ahmedabad, with lots of hype, invited our great railways minister Sri Laloo Prasad for a guest lecture at the premier institute.
Personally I feel Laloo is synonymous to most of the evils troubling this nation. To talk about Laloo, I need lot of space, hence I will confine myself to Laloo, the Railways minister.
First of all Laloo is touted as the trendsetter for Indian Railways. Let’s look at his contribution:
Laloo started with a bang with his idea of providing tea in earthen pots. There was lots of fanfare about how the cottage industry is going to be benefited. I had the problem of not understanding the priority of Railway Minister; running the railways or improving the cottage industry? May be I am an ignorant fool. Can anybody enlighten me a little more? It is another matter that after initial hype, even the railway minister has forgotten about them.
Personally I feel Laloo is synonymous to most of the evils troubling this nation. To talk about Laloo, I need lot of space, hence I will confine myself to Laloo, the Railways minister.
First of all Laloo is touted as the trendsetter for Indian Railways. Let’s look at his contribution:
Laloo started with a bang with his idea of providing tea in earthen pots. There was lots of fanfare about how the cottage industry is going to be benefited. I had the problem of not understanding the priority of Railway Minister; running the railways or improving the cottage industry? May be I am an ignorant fool. Can anybody enlighten me a little more? It is another matter that after initial hype, even the railway minister has forgotten about them.
Next, Laloo has made the Railways a profitable organization:
I don’t know how he made all the profits, but as I am traveling extensively by railways for last 4/5 months, I have practically seen some methods, which I will not contribute to good management. I will not dispute the fact those are examples of slick profiteering practices normally associated with the private sectors. I will call them only suitable for tricksters.
Maybe a year or two back Railway minister declared reduction of rail fare by Rs.1 with lots of fanfare. They have not increased passenger fare. Because they don’t need to do it openly, they have various ingenious methods of doing that.
1) The railways has introduced Rs.10/-extra levy, for any ticket reserved from out station. As most of the people purchase to and fro tickets, he/she has to shell out Rs.10/- per person for the return journey ticket. And in case you are unfortunate enough to cancel the ticket for whatever the reason, you need to shell out again Rs.10/- extra for outstation ticket.
2) From July 2006, Railways has converted a whooping 140 odd trains from express/mail to super fast trains, by reducing their travel time by one or more hours. In the process collecting Rs.20/- per passenger as super fast charges. Nothing wrong, only problem is that from Hyderabad to New Delhi the original super fast train AP express takes 26 hours whereas the newly converted super fast train Dakshin express takes 30 hours (this is only one example I am aware of, but I am certain there will be plenty).
I had the misfortune of traveling in two of the newly converted super fast trains during last 3 months; Godavari express from Hyderabad to Visakhapatnam and Bangalore express from Hyderabad to Bangalore. The journey time of these two trains were reduced by one and a half hours approximately to make them super fast. And believe me, on all my 4 journeys on each route, the trains were late by more than 1 –2 hours, thus actually taking the same amount of journey time. What do you call this? I call them day light cheating.
3) Till very recent past the railways was charging Rs.5/- per day per baggage in cloakrooms (left luggage rooms). Now the same has been doubled to Rs.10/-; 100% inflation. Whereas if you look at the official porter charges for the poor porters the increase from Rs.5/ to Rs.7/-, (it is another matter, if you try to give the porters the official charge, they will accuse you of murder). That also I don’t know when the last revision happened (Laloo is supposed to be messiah of poor).
4) Railways have a Tatkal reservation system for passengers who decide to travel at the last moment. Earlier you could book only one day before the departure of the train. It was helpful for passengers who had to travel in emergency. Railways charge hefty fees for Tatkal reservation. The railways have increased the Tatkal fee by 200% in the last couple of years. But most tragic and comic part is that you can book Tatkal reservation 5 days in advance. By doing so the railways has also given a new meaning of the word Tatkal (Immediate). Surprised, then read more. You can also book waitlisted ticket in the Tatkal scheme. The waitlisted person whose ticket does not get confirmed has to shell out certain amount of fees. Earlier you had to show some personal identification while booking under Tatkal scheme to discourage malpractices. Now they have removed that criterion.
These are few examples of Railways hoodwinking the public for making profit. I am sure you can find more.
Now I will go to some serious issues.
When was it decided to convert Railways to a profit making organization instead of the social responsibility of the Govt.? In their pursuit of making profit they are overlooking the basic responsibilities of Indian Railways. One example: every year hundreds of people die to cross un-manned level crossings. And the Railways ministry gives paucity of funds the reason for not providing manned level crossings. They show Rs.1000/- crore as profit! I would like to know how much amount are they spending for improvement of safety. The kind of railways accidents are taking place, the general public has right to know, why are they happening and what are the actions taken to reduce them. Why the amount shown as profit could not be spent on safety measures? To give Rs.400/- crores as bonus to the employees?
I am talking about the kind of service provided by the railways. It is common complaint of paucity of basic amenities in the coaches in sleeper class. Forget about the unreserved compartments and railway stations. Upper classes are better. But in this pro-poor country getting ticket in upper classes is not easy.
I must admit that the cleanliness of Vijaywada and Visakhapatnam stations are praiseworthy. They have given the cleaning services to private parties in these two stations. It was really pleasant sight to see well-uniformed persons cleaning the stations and trains.
I would have liked to judge the railway minister with the accident-free, corruption free, and passenger friendly service, not by the kind of profit railways are making.
If they want to run the railways as a profit making organization, nothing wrong with that. Let them convert it to some company like Indian Airlines. Why we need a minister for that? Why the railway budget has to be approved by the Parliament? It is not difficult. Let them divide the railways into two parts; one for running the facilities like airport authority and the other for running trains, where we can get more operators to play. Let them leave their monopolistic hold over the railways. Let there be private competition as we have seen in the airways and telecom sector. Let there be accountability. When the passengers are paying, let the railways pay penalty for the late running of the trains. When we talk about profitability there should be accountability also. There should be yardstick of the services provided. When we can complain for any kind of bad service received from the supplier to consumer forum, we should have recourse of complaining for the bad service provided by the railways.
Unfortunately for India, today we have totally forgotten that India is a socialist republic, the Govt. of India has some social responsibility. We, the citizens of India, are so much bugged by the words, profit and money making, that we are forgetting our social responsibilities. The moment we find profit, we start dancing, whatever the crooked way it might have been earned. Railways cannot be run by the profiteering mentality. If I am not mistaken, the major part of Indian Railways runs on the premise of social responsibility. Majority of the railway stations do not earn enough money to meet the expenses to run the stations, forget about making profit.I really wish to find out what are the other tricks Laloo employing to hoodwink the public. I feel he should get the award of greatest trickster
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