Some points, rail electrification was not done for today it was done with consideration of tomorrow.
It could have been staggered. That's the whole point. IR went about it in mission mode for they were tasked with it & provided the funds for it with a deadline.
Diesel locomotives become redundant but not useless, they are still being used. And will continue being used
Where will you use a diesel locomotive in a fully electrified grid except for shunting ?
Diesel locomotives as everything depreciate so it’s not 50 crore per locomotive, so the whole value of 1,25,000 is wrong.
All capital goods are subject to depreciation. Are electric trains immune from it ? I also used the the word UPTO INR 50 cr & the estimates are obviously in the upper bracket.
Thermal plant has less carbon footprint to run 2500 electric locomotives compared to 2500 diesel locomotives. (My assumption)
I don't agree with his reasoning . Electrification is mandatory for a nation like ours poor in crude oil deposits & would've been carried out much like the standardization of railway gauge. The only issue of contention is the time line not the act itself. It should have been staggered over a 20 year period & funds allocated to improving speed on tracks.
Imagine having trainsets capable of running @160 kmph running at half the speed due to constraints of tracks.
Piyush goyal tried to cancel GE contract but it was too late so we are stuck with those engines and it’s good to have a backup as there can be grid failure which can effect.
The cumulative value of the tender awarded to construct the Electric Locomotive factory in Madhepura & the Diesel Electric Locomotive in Marhowrah was 6 billion USD . Assuming it was split into half it still works out to 3 billion USD = ~ 26, 000 crores at today's exchange rates for 1000 DE locomotives .
On which planet do they employ 2500 DE locomotives as back up for a once in a blue moon event ?
At the end of day it was railway advisors who came up with electrification and there will be always someone who will criticize.
Railway advisors didn't come up with this recommendation. It came from Leaderji . I state no studies or thought was applied to this move . Unfortunately our railway upgradation / modernization program is poorly conceived & not well implemented.
The entire program of spending crores on beautifying & upgradation of key railway terminus / stations is also part of this thought process. In a resource scarce nation like ours it's ill advised to spend the kind of money we're on it .
If anything we ought to have monetized these assets thru a public private partnership model where after identification of such assets for the purpose of real estate exploitation we formed a holding company in partnership perhaps with the state government & offered these places to the Pvt sector to lease for say a period of 25 years after getting them to beautify / modernise these stations & against payment of a fixed sum ( either on a lumpsum basis or on a partnership model or a fixed annual payment ) .
I'd further have local train network be handled by the state government leaving the centre to handle inter state network after due legislation specifying asset ownership distribution , maintenance , revenue model , safety etc .
Anyway I digress . This is a topic for another day.
I don’t mind them criticizing, I find his assumption full of flaws just when it comes to electrification.
Coal is cheaper then diesel.
I believe he's referring to the cumulative pollution . Besides he's also explained it on the basis of efficiency of a diesel locomotive vs an electric one.
He even takes US as example which is wrong in our context.
Lalu decision to overload the train was wrong, nobody talks about deterioration of the railway track because of overload, the assumption was the trains were already overloaded so he just legalized it, well there are few workers who will do that but not all, once you legalized it then you allow everyone to do it.
It was making a virtue of a necessity but his larger point was it would not be possible without track upgradation / repairs though I admit he should have mentioned Laloo's opportunism but then he'd be implicating himself as in the IR itself for the way the model operates today is IR tenders freight carrying to Pvt parties who on winning the tender pay IR upfront (?) & in turn source freight from industry where in order to maximize their earnings they indulge in over loading.
IR is supposed to monitor this & call it out preventing overloading wherever it occurs but it doesn't because palms are greased all the way & down the IR hierarchy.
