Lessons from PPPs of Indian Railways and Way Forward

The Indian Railways (IR) have grand plans. They would like to leapfrog to a higher growth trajectory during 2010-20. Towards this, they would like to see a total investment of Rs 14,00,000 crores (cr), as stated in the Vision 2020, brought out by the Ministry of Railways (MoR) in December 2009. With whatever level of optimistic projections for the internal resources and borrowings for the coming decade, clearly, PPPs would have to be a significant source. This makes it imperative for the IR to create a policy framework that would attract PPPs, especially in the context that the PPPs in IR have not taken off as projected. This paper reviews PPP projects that the IR has evolved over the past 25 years. These include operating partnership projects of IR including with the state government, PPPs in the pipeline, and discontinued partnership projects in IR. The paper brings out issues that have implications for PPPs in IR. The significant ones are focus on infrastructure creation PPPs rather than service PPPs, partner selection more contextually based than through open competitive bidding, more than acceptable time lags between conceptualization and project execution, issues in extending the project scope, non mutuality in contractual arrangements, and conflict of interest due to multiple roles of IR. Based on these issues, the paper derives certain key lessons and provides a way forward.

How Can Indian Railways Service the Steel Sector Better?

The focus of this paper is on how Indian Railways can service the steel sector better. The steel sector is a core sector, with railways playing a critical role in its logistics. The paper examines the changing industry structure and brings to light the increased need for transportation, as compared to normal planning processes. Traditionally, crude and finished steel making was done in the same location by big producers having integrated plants. Now the industry has a large number of producers who primarily focus on crude steel making or finished steel making, necessitating the need for transporting crude steel to the finished steel makers. Even within finished steel making, there could be levels of value addition where the output of one finished steel maker could become the input for another. This has implications for the transporters including Indian Railways in formulating their strategies. Further, based on the growth projections of the steel sector and a possible increased share of rail transport, Indian Railways need to strategize for a six fold increase in traffic. This could be upto 1 billion tons of originating traffic by 2019-20. The papers examines the current issues in rail transport for the steel sector and proposes strategies for the way forward under the dimensions of infrastructure, technology and systems.

Indian Railways in the Past Twenty Years Issues, Performance and Challenges

Indian Railways (IR) is Asia’s largest and world’s second largest network under one management, with a separate Ministry and its own annual budget. The network carried about 17 million Passengers and 2 mt freight every day on the route of 63,327 km (2006-07). Although key business operations are freight and passenger, IR is also engaged in several allied services including parcel, catering and production units. Nearly 70 percent of IR’s revenues come from the freight operations, which can be segmented into bulk and other cargo. Over the years, IR has predominantly become a bulk freight carrier, accounting for about 94 percent of the freight revenue. Coal alone accounts for nearly half of the bulk traffic carried. Passenger business accounts for nearly 60 percent of IR’s total transport effort, in terms of train kilometers, but yield less than 30 percent of the total revenues. Suburban services account for 57 percent of the originating passengers, while contribute to only 8 percent of the passenger revenue. To understand the development process of IR’s over the past twenty years, the study covers issues and strategies related to financial and physical aspects of revenue generating freight and passenger traffic from 1987-2007. Study also covers the developments in the parcel, catering and advertising sector.

Marketing Strategies for Freight Traffic on Indian Railways - A Systems Perspective

Indian Railways (IR) had lost its market share in high rated freight commodities especially cement, POL, and iron and steel. IR was missing an overall strategy for freight business, which was overcharged without sensitivity to competition. Over time, other transport modes, especially road (and pipeline in the case of POL) captured a very significant share of freight due to their faster and door-to-door deliveries. Several initiatives have been taken in the recent past to make IRs’ strategies market oriented like increased axle loading, better pricing strategy, and improved services. In 2005-06, IR loaded 667 mt of revenue earning freight traffic, marking an increase of 110 mt over 2003-04. Additional freight revenue was Rs 9172 crore during the same period. IR still has a tremendous potential in the freight business, but it needs to be examined with an appropriate framework for segmentation of the market. Like in any other transport business, an origin-destination (OD) based systems perspective could be used. The primary categorization of origins would be industry/collection centre, mine and port. The primary categorization of destinations would be industry, port and distribution center. An attempt was made by the authors to do an OD analysis on the 666.5mt (602.1 mt) of freight traffic of 2005-06 (2004-05). The above analysis has implications for leveraging the four Ps of marketing; product (service attributes), price, promotion, and place (logistics). This paper attempts to evolve marketing strategies for freight traffic, based on the OD market analysis specified above.

Container Train Operators in India: Problems and Prospects

In India, railways are under the control of the government which is the sole provider of the infrastructure, operations and regulatory functions. Private participation, though very limited, was largely in the domain of infrastructure creation. In January 2006, in a landmark initiative to introduce competition in the container operations segment, the Ministry of Railways allowed the entry of private and public sector operators to obtain licences for running container trains on the Indian Railways (IR) network. Until then, the Container Corporation of India, a subsidiary of IR, was the monopoly operator of container trains in India. This initiative was the first significant move of its kind where private parties were allowed to make entry in the domain of railway operations with direct customer interfacing. The response to the policy was good and 15 new entrants obtained licences to run container trains. Due to lack of clarity or inconsistency in matters pertaining to haulage charges, maintenance of wagons, transit guarantees from IR and terminal access charges, operators started feeling skeptical about the viability of the business. This paper examines the current policy environment from the point of view of business viability for 15 new Container Train Operators and brings out issues related to licensing, pricing, terminals, maintenance, and service levels. Keywords: Indian Railways, Container Train Operators, Container Corporation of India, Policy Issues for Container Transport

Introducing Competition in Container Movement by Rail

Container movement by rail was a monopoly of Indian Railways (IR) until recently and its subsidiary, Container Corporation (CONCOR) was the sole operator of container trains. Entry of other entities in 2007 has been driven by larger public policy concerns. In the process, issues such as resistance of the incumbent, erection of entry barriers, denial of level playing field, use of a closely held organization as a consultant, and conflicting roles of IR as licensor, regulator, service provider, and operator came into sharp focus. This paper attempts to review the process starting from the policy announcement (February 2005) to evolution of a Model Concession Agreement (January 2007) and shows how policies were influenced by the incumbent to restrict competition by creating barriers on the one hand and how an alternate view provided by external entities, like the Planning Commission and other non-IR stakeholders significantly altered the course of action leading to entry of a large number of competing players.

Biocomposting of extracted peppermint plant residue (Mentha piperita) using red worm, Eisenia fetida and its effect on the growth of Vigna mungo (Urad)

The study on biocomposting of extracted peppermint plant residue, Mentha piperita using red worms, Eisenia fetida on the growth of Vigna mungo (Urad) showed that the worms transformed 1:3 waste: dung medium into bio-compost one week earlier from 1:1 and two weeks earlier from 3:1 media. Rate of reproduction of worms was recorded 2.5 times faster in 1:3 medium than that of 3:1 and the number of earthworms was counted 2.09 times more in 1:3 waste: dung medium than that of 3:1. It was noticed that the bio-compost transformed from 1:3waste: dung medium when mixed with soil in 1:3 ratio and used as growing medium, showed the maximum shoot length of V. mungo (28.2 cm) and the minimum (24.3 cm) when it was transformed from 3:1 (waste: dung) medium and used in 1:1 ratio of vermicompost and soil. Results were discussed in the light of known data

A Temporal Analysis of Intraday Volatility of Nifty Futures on the National Stock Exchange

This paper aims to establish trends in intraday volatility in context of the Indian stock market and analyze the impact of development in the Indian economy on its stock market volatility. One minute tick data of Nifty 50 futures from Jan 1, 2011 to Aug 31, 2018 was used for the purpose of this research. Volatility was computed for each day of week and various time intervals. Our analysis shows evidence of the expected U-shaped pattern of intraday volatility (higher at the beginning and end of the day). We also observed a decline in the hourly volatility over the time period studied. However, sufficient evidence to determine the impact of development in the Indian economy on volatility in the stock market was not found

A Temporal Analysis of Intraday Volatility of Nifty Futures on the National Stock Exchange

This paper aims to establish trends in intraday volatility in context of the Indian stock market and analyze the impact of development in the Indian economy on its stock market volatility. One minute tick data of Nifty 50 futures from Jan 1, 2011 to Aug 31, 2018 was used for the purpose of this research. Volatility was computed for each day of week and various time intervals. Our analysis shows evidence of the expected U-shaped pattern of intraday volatility (higher at the beginning and end of the day). We also observed a decline in the hourly volatility over the time period studied. However, sufficient evidence to determine the impact of development in the Indian economy on volatility in the stock market was not found