Indian Railway Management Service and engineers !



Thanks to Sri Piyush Goyal , Railway Board and Govt of India a golden era now for engineers of India !! How?

Almost all metro projects headed by IAS . Tendering and award of contracts by consultants , verified by consultants and paid by finance .. good easy model with no intellectual engineering input to improve . 

Reg professionalism less said the better . Bridge engineering used to be top proud seat but got progressively closed down . Then new culture of prime consultants, consultants etc layers finally even to certify bills put in place to assure safety while paying contractors but still assure fair returns to stakeholders. 

The system has become putrid . Anyway simple stores code application contract tender for design construction including engineering and trouble shooting in place,  every technical job is now open to non technical person. Management is key word . 

So UPSC will scrap all engineering services for railways and include IRMS under allied services  in IAS exam I think. That’s rational consequence . 

Minister says depending on aptitude the officer gets posted whether infrastructure or business development or rolling stock and traction. 

So to my mind Railway Staff college may conduct to check for aptitude like we do for babies under a year age, which object the baby crawls to perhaps . By the by why Railway University now At Vadodara? Not needed perhaps. 

RDSO can be shut down and test facilities may be handed over to CSIR perhaps with all those assets. 

Testing and certification too can be outsourced. 

Trains and services privatized, infrastructure too maintenance privatized with another third party doing the QA checks .

So who will go to Zambia or Malaysia  as tech experts from railways? RITES will have a problem to claim railway technical expertise. May be reverse technical advice will happen from those countries to us .

Happy times ahead with no responsibility but full safety to own self. :  I Am Safe .. let public go enjoy their karma 😀🙏

But most dangerous is being ignorant of railway which is as technically complex as a heart surgery and prone to faults and accidents involving heavy loss of lives , needs constant multidisciplinary technical inputs which is beyond the generalist management competence . 

But if a review is taken the following is a compromise perhaps .

We need to step back and evaluate the impact of this decision, instead of reacting emotionally.
It is no one’s argument that there is no departmentalism in IR. Despite efforts by our seniors and contemporaries, we have been unable to get rid of this malaise.

One all-encompassing department is, however, too drastic an option. They should have started with an IR Management Service, members of which to be drawn from all departments after a certain number of years. IRMS members would occupy identified general posts including that of ADRM, DRM, AGM and GM and the Rly Board members as revised only with IRMS officers.

After 20 years of service , UPSC selects the willing  officers for empaneling in to IRMS . 

The technical departments would continue with their own seniorities and postings. So also for Traffic, Accounts and Personnel.

That would leave all engineers the opportunity to excel in their respective fields. 

What is really required additionally is financial independence for IR. The merger of IR’s finances with the General Budget has been an unqualified disaster. There is no financial accountability now.
The role of the CRB as CEO is to my mind a good step. I have been witness to many important and desperately required decisions pended because of differences between Members, with the CRB powerless to push through the proposals.

Most important reform is processes should be reformed to make accountability center and power centre synonymous . Konkan Railway example. 

A last comment. IR is a service organisation. We live for our customers. Can a Government Department run by bureaucrats  deliver on customer satisfaction? 

The Government should pause and rethink.
Regards and happy New Year to all !

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Are we experiencing life in a world already extinct millions of years ago?

Image
It’s not rare that my mind feels we are actually living in a world that might have been extinct millions of years ago!     As per Vishnu Sahasra Namam, part of Mahabharata authored by Sri Vedavyasa, Brahma praises his own father Sri Vishnu as Sahasra Yuga Dharane namaha . That if we take as life time for Brahama from his own birth before start of creation and own liberation annihilating the entire creation to join that realm which has no cycles of birth and death. —-ever present abode of Sri Narayana as per Brahmasutra and described in Sri Bhagavad Gita too. That is 1000x10^7x4.32 m or 4.32x 10^16 solar years.        The time scale of Sri Vishnu who is said to create and maintain this universe merely by a wish within less than a second of His time . This translates as the equivalent to 10^16 solar years is my submission. This is  followed by equal time period of yoga Nidra or entire universe transformed back in to suspended particles. So the process of creation and destruction continue
Read more

The great Indian Puzzle.

Image
The great Indian Puzzle:  own technology to save every single life in land transportation, decongest cities and roads, save fossil fuels, avoid painful land and property acquisition, all weather system, eliminates modal split and seamlessly integrates for both cargo and people, more importantly financially viable, proven and cleared by Government in 2005 itself BUT ignore  and continue to keep doing infrastructure development with century old technologies, proudly too, to add insult to injury, causing tears to land and property owners, spending four times more but unable to achieve any positive result, cities remain congested, floods can shut down cities, accidents keep killing people and losing heavily public funds in terms of subsidising losses since famously these are not financilayy viable. Isn't it height of stupidity or lack of integrity in engineers for misguiding their governments? How history will judge, only time will tell    
Read more

The Statesman Kolkata covered ACD on 29th July 2010

Image
Print E-mail Ignoring safety, breeding insecurity 28 July 2010 It is a burning issue within Indian Railways, amongst conscientious senior officers who know about what is happening and all that could ~ and should ~ have been done to avert the spate of track tragedies that have cost thousands of lives over the past few years. Yet, apart from lip-service to the need for an anti-collision device (ACD), usually in the context of a cry in favour of the installation of a ruinously expensive Train Protection Warning System (TPWS) after every train accident, the technologies are confused. And people remain unaware of our indigenously developed, cheaper and superior technology infused ACD, the Raksha Kavach, the introduction of which has been repeatedly stalled. Perhaps Miss Mamata Banerjee need to be reminded of her own commitment to an ACD, and there's none better placed to do so than Mr Bojji Rajaram, a retired Indian Railways official who served as MD Konkan Railway Corporation and as
Read more