PremiumRailway minister Ashwini Vaishnav says that the Indian Railways would come out, very soon, with a policy to outsource research and development (R&D), to the extent of 90% of the Railways’ outlay for research to the private sector
Railway minister Ashwini Vaishnav says that the Indian Railways would come out, very soon, with a policy to outsource research and development (R&D), to the extent of 90% of the Railways’ outlay for research to the private sector. It is an honourable ambition to involve the private sector in R&D. But ambition has to be made of sterner stuff than ministerial enthusiasm.
Research, Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO) is that part of the Railways that is currently in charge of research, design, standards, testing and quality assurance, so as to absorb technology into the railway system while ensuring safety. Research is done jointly by RDSO and the operative manufacturing facilities, whether of coaches or locomotives. The fast train, Train 18, for example, was developed jointly by the Integral Coach Factory and RDSO.
If the private sector is to be roped in for rail R&D, it needs to work closely with RDSO, to develop new standards, if these are required, to agree on the suitability of new designs, and most crucially to carry out tests and meet certification standards. While individual parts can be tested for proper functioning on their own at any developer’s own facility, once integrated into a train, the train has to be tested for oscillation within acceptable parameters. This calls for test tracks. Setting up separate test tracks of the serviceable kind involves land, whose procedural and financial cost of acquisition, development and construction can be substantial. For private R&D outfits to create their own test tracks might make sense, once they have reached the size of America’s GE, Spain’s CAF, French Alstom, German Siemens or the big daddy of them all, China’s CRRC. Till then, they should be able to use the facilities of RDSO.
In other words, private sector development of research products for the Railways calls for collaboration between the existing public sector R&D wing of the Railways, RDSO, and new private sector players. In fact, the RDSO would need to be revamped and strengthened further.
For RDSO, to test and certify a new design or technology that has been conceptualized and developed or co-developed by RDSO itself is one thing, to absorb a new technical product or a technology that has been developed wholly outside its ecosystem is something else altogether. It would need to have the capacity to test things with no prior knowledge of the product, technology or development philosophy. It is desirable to develop such capability, but cannot be left to chance. Serious money would have to be invested to develop this capability, along with changes in organizational structure and culture.
In other words, inducting private sector R&D cannot and should not be viewed as supplanting public sector R&D, but as supplementing it. Recent trends in this area have been disappointing in the Railways. The Railways used to have an apprentice scheme that developed skilled engineers who understood the DNA of the Railways and were real engineers who worked on the shopfloor, understood and respected workmanship and camaraderie, knew to give respect and earn respect, and went on to become key personnel in the Railways’ technical and even general managerial cadre.
The Special Class Railway Apprentice was selected at age 17, and went to work as an apprentice engineer with a stipend at the Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, Jamalpur, Bihar. They learned engineering of the kind that involves grease, wrenches, muscle, sweet tea shared with workers and actual knowledge of the innards of a train and not just abstract diagrams and computer coding. These apprentices later join the Railways and run it. Two of them developed the Train18.
The Railways should revive and expand this apprenticeship scheme while allocating a larger budget for creating an in-house startup ecosystem. This would not rule out asking the private sector also to play a larger role in rail R&D. With the energy transition from carbon-intensive fuels applying to the Railways and the need to protect the entire rail management and signalling systems from cyberattack and sabotage, new avenues of rail R&D open up. Its horizons would extend to the entire world and not be limited to Indian Railways.
India should certainly encourage private R&D in rail, but not as a substitute for public sector R&D but as something that supplements it.
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