Transcript :

Kya yeh bullet train ek liyei economic benefits laa sakkti hai?

Would it be more beneficial to upgrade the entire Indian Railway network than spend the funds
on a single high-cost project?

Meri sarkaar ko appeal hai ki aap existing dhaanchein parr dhyaan dein..sarkaar kei paas karrnei
ko bahaut hai

-Bullet trains :

Narendra Modi said: “This enterprise will launch a revolution in Indian railways and speed up
India’s journey into the future. It will become an engine of economic transformation in India.”
But will it?

-Facts : Indian Railways is the third-largest railway network in the world with 7,083 railway
stations, 131,205 railway bridges, 9,000 locomotives, 51,030 passenger coaches, 219,931 freight
cars and 63,974 route kilometres. Today, Indian Railways operates 19,000 trains each day,
comprising 12,000 passenger trains and 7,000 freight trains. It transports 2.65 million tonnes of
freight traffic and 23 million passengers every day and 7.2 billion passengers per year. It currently
has 1.36 million employees and an annual revenue base of about Rs 120,000 crores ($20 billion).
(from an article published on dec 17 2015)

- The Indian cabinet swiftly cleared the $14.7bn cost of building the 650-km long bullet train
system.
- End ke paas ek table dikhaao jissmei ek side parr good points(only 2) aurr doosri side parr bad
points( several ) dikhao

Good points :

-The bullet train will run at 240 kmph, reducing travel time between the two cities — a distance
of 534 km — to two hours from the present eight hours,

-India will become a bullet train holding nation.

Bad points :

-Its top managers have frequently red-signaled the crisis. A top official said: “In the final analysis,
the performance of the organisation would be just at the bottom line and unless we are in a
position to control the expenditure and increase the earnings on a sustained basis, survival for
the organization becomes a very difficult proposition.” But the Railways get by every year with
huge dollops of government funding and increasingly by postponing vital investments. For
instance important decisions such as the filling of tens of thousands of safety-related posts such
as gangmen, pointsmen, signalmen and assistant station masters keeps getting postponed.

The consequences of this are seen in the burgeoning incidence of railways related accidents and
deaths. Since 2000 there have been 89 major accidents and almost two thirds of them since
2010. It is estimated is that almost 15,000 people die on tracks due to unlawful trespassing on
tracks every year of which about 6,000 are on the Mumbai suburban section. According to the
Home Ministry records, 25,006 people died and 3,882 were injured in a total of 28,360 railway
accidents across the country in 2014 alone.

The challenge was clear for many years. In 2012 a high level committee recognised that the
condition of the tracks and bridges is a cause of concern as trains have to run slowly because of
the weak tracks. It tasked the Indian Railways to:

*Modernise 19,000 km of existing tracks comprising nearly 40% of the total network and
carrying about 80% of the traffic.
*Eliminate level crossings and provide fencing alongside tracks. To eliminate level crossings by
building rail over and under bridges.

*Strengthen 11,250 bridges to sustain higher loads at higher speeds, noting that about a quarter
of out of 131,000 bridges are over 100 years old.

*Provide 100% mechanized track maintenance on the main routes to provide for superior quality
of track laying and maintenance.

But neither the Indian Railways nor the Indian government has so far been able to rustle up even
a fraction of the Rs. 800,000 crores ($130 billion) outlay for this. Shouldn't the focus be on
modernising and upgrading the entire system?

The question therefore must be, how does a bullet train joining Mumbai and Ahmedabad
address any of these urgent needs?

-No matter how much you try convincing people by spanning the cost of loan over 50 years, the
point is that everyone knows that the revenue from the train is going to be too little and too late.
Who even needs a bullet train for such a short distance? How many people actually travel by
planes in India when the journey is only for 5-7 hours? How many will actually be able to afford
this journey? I guess only the elite, the poor will still stand in tatkal queues to buy unreserved
tickets just to be able to squeeze themselves into stinking compartments.

Instead, why don't we upgrade the current infrastructure? Get better coaches? Connect the
north-East? Focus on more tourism oriented investment? Focus on more freight corridors?

This article is just outright stupid. I would rather invest in building a kickass underground system
for the metropolitan cities than burning all the money to connect two cities that are not even on
the travel map of 99.9% Indians,
-the writer forgot to mention that the loan is in Yen, which door to door translates to 8-9%
interest cost, which isn't so soft afterall. That is the nature of all Japanese lending. Of course it
isn't an annual spend but spread over a few years. There is a framework available for analysing
economic returns of such projects. If the economic benefits are not well-established, it shouldn't
be undertaken. A few world-class metros in Indian cities are better investments than trying to
get from Ahmedabad to Mumbai a few hours earlier.

-Mumbai and Ahmedabad are already well connected by air and passenger trains. Introducing a
bullet train will not have a significant impact on trade. A bullet train that saves two hours of
travel is not as important as solving the problems of those who lose time on the existing rail
network because of poor management.

-More than anything the Indian Railways typifies the vast, creaking and dilapidated nature of
India’s infrastructure. At the root of this is that the Railways hardly earns enough to pay for itself,
let alone invest in modernisation and safety. The Indian Railways is cash strapped mainly due to
the recurring losses in the passenger segment of its operations. Last year , it lost Rs 30,000
crores ($5 billion). The loss per passenger-km increased to Rs. 0.23. After adjusting the income it
takes from freight, the Railways is left with a surplus cash of just Rs. 690 crores ($115mn). (from
an article published on 17 dec 2015)

-Finally, the big question that will not go away is whether the same investment on upgrading the
entire Indian Railway network would be more economically beneficial than a single high-cost
project? India adds a million young people to its work force every month. There is little
disagreement that upgradation of the entire network would entail creation of many more new
jobs than a single capital and import intensive project. How does this tie in with Prime Minister
Modi’s hope that “it will become an engine of economic transformation in India?”

- Compare cost of bullet train to cost of flight check in.

- Nowhere in the world do bullet trains make money, though a lot of them make operational
profits, much like the metros, which helps them
 run their service in an uninterrupted way,

- US richer but much more cautious about massive public spending

To compare this ratio of 3.3X, let us take the United States. The United States is also building a
bullet train from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Around three times longer than India’s proposed
Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train, the project costs have been estimated at $68 billion, making it
the most expensive public works project in US history. However, again to compare with health,
federal health spending in the US comes to $1.1 trillion (FY 2016). This most expensive public
works in the history of the US has a cost which is only 0.06X of its annual federal health budget.
Even at this tiny ratio, however, the train is facing a significant opposition in the US for being too
expensive.

Given the debilitating human development indicators in India, to spend 3.3X of the federal
health budget on a bullet train is a vastly misplaced priority.

-We can replace one bullet train for several shatabdis and rajdhanis/talgo train

http://satyavijayi.com/experiences-common-man-railways-improving-suresh-prabhu/3/

-The razzmatazz of a bullet train might help him politically but can Prime Minister Narendra
Modi justify reducing the Mumbai-Ahmedabad

commute by two hours as a more important public goal than rail safety, ending open
defecation, schooling, building highways across the

country or public health?(maybe also add - We don’t have biotoilets on our coaches and what
we defecate falls on the tracks )

-There is an interesting contrast here with healthcare. Like bullet trains, the BJP manifesto had
also promised a plan for universal
 Healthcare. This is much needed. India’s healthcare system is shambolic and according to a
World Health Organisation study, ranks 112th

in the world

(for context, eastern neighbour Bangladesh ranks in at 88, a good 24 places ahead). Yet, in
March 2015, the Modi government decided to

scrap plans for a universal healthcare scheme due to a “constraint on India's financial
resources”. This plan, which could have changed

India dramatically, had a budget which was just 25% more than the Mumbai-Ahmedabad
bullet train link.)

-If you have money, the Indian Railways is great fun, bullet or no bullet. But the lesser mortal
who travels without reservation is exactly where she was 35 years ago: she has to queue for up
to an hour in agonising heat to buy a ticket, there is no functional board to tell her where or
when the train is likely to arrive, the enquiry counter is jammed, and more often than not the
train is so packed that boarding it is a feat of acrobatics.

Crowding in unreserved coaches has reached crisis proportions. Three decades ago, it was
possible to travel unreserved on most routes and have a reasonably pleasant journey. That is still
possible on some routes, especially in south and western India. But in north India, unreserved
travel has become a relentless nightmare. Passenger traffic has shot up, but the number of
unreserved coaches has barely increased even as numerous priority trains were launched. On
the more crowded routes, the boarding of unreserved coaches is now policed by constables with
lathis – it is a pathetic sight to see people being herded like cattle into coaches that are already
jam-packed.

-There is an interesting contrast here with healthcare. Like bullet trains, the BJP manifesto had
also promised a plan for universal healthcare. This is much needed. India’s healthcare system is
shambolic and according to a World Health Organisation study, ranks 112th in the world (for
context, eastern neighbour Bangladesh ranks in at 88, a good 24 places ahead). Yet, in March
2015, the Modi government decided to scrap plans for a universal healthcare scheme due to a
“constraint on India's financial resources”. This plan, which could have changed India
dramatically, had a budget which was just 25% more than the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train
link.

http://www.dnaindia.com/money/report-here-s-how-much-mumbai-ahmedabad-bullet-train-
ride-will-cost-you-2209076

-India should be on a toilet overdrive, yet the government of India is going to spend 41X of its
Swachh Bharat Mission outlay for 2014-'15 on building a somewhat fast train line between two
cities already superbly connected by road, rail and air.

Bullet trains were part of BJP’s manifesto

http://thelogicalindian.com/news/iim-study-says-ahmedabad-to-mumbai-on-a-bullet-train-will-
cost-same-as-flight-tickets/ ( see this link to get more details)

How much does India spend on other things

-The bullet train syndrome perpetuates an elitist approach to the Indian Railways, which consists
of creating a pleasant fast track for a privileged minority at the cost of slumdog treatment for the
rest. It is, alas, a metaphor for public policy in many other fields as well.

-Bullet train > health, safety or schools

There’s more: the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train cost is almost 4X the amount the Centre is
going to invest in rail safety in 2015-16. Just a week ago, India saw two train accidents claim 14
lives and the Indian rail system is one of the most unsafe in the world. Yet, precious money is
being diverted from safety to needless luxuries like a bullet train. In fact, shockingly, the bullet
train budget is 2.4X the entire amount the government of India is going to spend on the Indian
Railways in 2015-'16.

The Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train budget is also 2.3X the entire spend of the Centre on
schools. The corresponding figure for health and highways is 3.3 and 2.3, respectively.

-Narendra Modi has made cleanliness a key part of his government’s message. And indeed, India
desperately needs it being one of the countries with the worst rates of open defecation on the
planet. 44% of Indians do not use what is probably the most basic marker of modernity: a toilet.
Even Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh beat big brother India with corresponding figures of 32%,
13% and 1%, respectively.

India should be on a toilet overdrive, yet the government of India is going to spend 41X of its
Swachh Bharat Mission outlay for 2014-'15 on building a somewhat fast train line between two
cities already superbly connected by road, rail and air.

No need to read again : http://scroll.in/article/776233/is-modis-bullet-train-the-magic-bullet-to-

save-the-indian-railways

No need to read again : http://scroll.in/article/775333/one-chart-that-shows-just-how-

absurdly-wasteful-modis-mumbai-ahmedabad-bullet-train-line-is