PAINS OF GROWTH?

TWorld Bank team, currently looking into the state of Indian Railways, has come at an appropriate time.The crisis created by wagon shortage on the industrial front will provide the experts with an excellent case study.The Railway Board is already familiar with some of the ideas of the World Bank for they has some plain speaking from Mr. Joseph Rucinsky, head of the last World Bank team to India.The present team is particularly wellequipped to deal with the problems facing us because it consists of the leaders of Canadian transport which in many ways is similar to the Indian system. It has been reported that India's main aim will be to get the World Bank provide most of the Rs. 190 crores foreign exchange envisaged by the Third Plan for the development of railways during the next five years. Granting that the Bank obliges the Railway Board. It would be folly to take that as the end of all our problems. For on a dispassionate analysis, the sad state of affairs on our tracks is not so much the result of lack of funds as the outcome of lack of coordination and imaginative planning.The first and probably the biggest mistake committed by the authorities was to thwart the development of road transport in order to give an extra fillip of the railways. Central Government spokesmen have of course repeatedly denied having done anything of the kind, but the record of the last few budgets is there for everyone to see.The net result of this policy has been to make road transport unable to contribute its share to easing the transport unable to contribute its share to easing the transport bottleneck in a rapidly growing economy. Besides, the railway authorities have been doing precious little about launching a scheme early enough to manufacture wagons. Only now have they made a serious announcement about the possibility of all Indian wagons being turned out in the near future.The authorities attention till now has been concentrated on low priority problems-like starting prestige lines and encouraging Harijan uplift through such questionable policies as unjustified promotions to Schedule Caste candidates.The first thing the Railway Board must do now if it is at all interested in ending the mess. Both the Railway Minister and Honourable M.P.'s were over -enthusiastic about the 'progress of the railways' during the debate on the last budget. It will do them and the country a lot of good if they realised that this progress has not been commensurate with the progress of the economy. It is to be hoped that the current study of the World Bank team will ultimately lead to a sense of realism among those in the driver's cabin of Indian Railways.