Rail budget 2014: 10 years, 99 projects launched, 1 completed. Another fraud?

It’s not an unknown fact that the Indian Railways have been suffering heavilybecause of time and cost overrun due to poor project management.

Presenting the Railway Budget in Parliament today, Railway Minister Sadananda Gowda said of the 99 projects taken up in 10 years costing Rs 60,000 crore, only one was completed. Isn’t this simply a fraud on the part of Railway Ministry?

Giving details of the poor state of project completion, Gowda offered chilling insight into how railway ministers have courted folly by announcing projects and not completing them.

He also pointed out that in the last 30 years as many as 676 projects were sanctioned worth Rs 1,57,883 crore. Of these, only 317 projects could be completed and 359 projects remain to be completed.He said the focus has been launching new projects and not completing them.

To expedite the projects at the ground level, Gowda plans to set up a project Monitoring & Coordination Group consisting of officials of State Government, Railways and professionals.

Gowda said that funds to the tune of about Rs 5 lakh crore, i.e. around Rs 50,000 crore per year fornext 10 years are required for ongoing projects alone. This leaves a huge gap between what is available as surplus and what is needed.

Gowda announced plans to introduce a bullet train in Mumbai-Ahmedabad sector and setting up of a Diamond Quadrilateral network of high speed rail connecting major metros and growth centres. A sum of Rs 100 crore has been provided for initiating the project.Disclosing that he needs more than Rs nine lakh crore to completing the Golden Quadrilateral Network and Rs 60,000 crore for introducing one bullet train alone.

Apart from mobilising resources, Gowda said he needed to strategically manage other aspects of planning and administration by adopting a near-holiday approach, setting timelines for ongoing projects, strategic partnership and aggressive indigenisation of imported projects.