Infosys Global Knowledge Center- Sonia inaugurates. should Indian railways emulate?

I totally agree and this reminds me of a paper I submitted long time back for a 5 year cycle of technology up gradation while I was in RDSO. But, a few more years down the line and experience with ACD technology and Skybus, I have some reservations too.

The technical and mental gaps develop rather too fast in services leading to in home technology getting outdated, with fixation for tenders, audit and vigilance. The excellent persons who enter the service, get too many knocks and the they end up as conditioned zombies, too scared to cross the lines to show any courage. Herd mentality takes over.

Infosys like infrastructure will result in mere training to stick to the same herd mentality only and reinforces the rut in which we keep running.

More importantly a need to be competitive with rewards for manging the inherent risks of innovation and remaining at the cutting edge, causing zeal to deliver and the excitement of working at the leading edge of technology development in own field of specialty, are the attitudes to be nurtured.

The iron frame work of rules based on suspicion that there cannot an honest worker or an officer, and the premise that unless proved not guilty he is a potential culprit, abhors the innovation and encourages sycophancy to survive.

May be the needs of Infosys are different and that is why, the way they manage it is different. TCS also have extensive spread out campuses for training and to to remain at the cutting edge; which is a matter survival as a corporate policy. Same with information technology companies of the nature Google/IBM.

Comparatively manufacturing companies of old economy ( not Sunrise-industries) , have always been traditionally slow in developing technologies and implementing the same, because of extensive spread of legacy technologies and investments already done. The delivery of a new technology becomes a victim of its own predecessor, in its time an outstanding breakthrough, and a combination of timing with some dynamic executive and policy support helped it to settle into the comfortable seat of adoption on a very wide scale, having a life cycle of 15 to 30 years.

Such large scales of implementation overwhelmingly require operation and maintenance support and this input becomes a predominant governing need for the industry to survive and meet day to day demand on its service. That is how railways all over the world developed into rather conservative systems. Our training programmes too developed to meet this need.

A change is the most difficult one and French, Japanese and Germans later, did manage incremental changes initially and later branched out in to a new segment of high speed sector, spread over a prolonged period of consistent public policy and funding support to private industries.

But remember the expertise is not within the railways--- but in private companies again.

There lies the rub. This marriage between private industry and the government funding to sustain, is abhorrent in the Indian context. Our tendering rules and multiple vendors act against such commitments whereas French and Japanese and later Germans broke through this mental block. USA to a large extent succeeded in defence, aviation only because of not having this mental block.

So merely copying what Infosys has done can result in only superior infrastructure, may be larger building blocks and audio visual and air conditioned halls and hostels, like superior equipment in railway hospitals, but the inputs of soft skills needed are dependent on the corporate requirement and policy initiative. While defence department in India also is toying with the idea of involving corporate houses, in new technology developments as a long term commitment , it is still to take off. They are only toying literally.

That way railways are clear and they do not want to even consider and waste time on such trivial matters. Safety is supreme, both for trains and men.

In India, every railway man and the Mantriji too wake up every day morning with a prayer on lips, "Oh God, give me my safe train running today!"