Reading Seminar

On

“Technology used in railways: contribution to the growth of country”

Submitted to:
Mrs.Debjani Banerjee
Faculty – Managerial Economics.
INC-Mira Road

Submitted by:
Jashwant Singh Katheat
Enrollment no: 8NBMM037
Batch-2008-2010

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 Contents

TITLE PAGES

Acknowledgements 3

Bonafide certificate 4

Introduction 5

Contributing to Modern Market Economy 6

Radio Frequency Identification (FRID) Technology 8

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 Acknowledgement

Jashwant Singh Katheat, a student of M.B.A. Semester II from

ICFAI National College, is making the true decleration of doing a

study on “Technology used in railways: contribution to the growth of country”

under the guidance of Mrs.Debjani Banerjee Faculty – Managerial Economics.

Jashwant singh katheat also thanks Mrs.Debjani Banerjee

for giving her valuable advice and several constants for

making the study successful. I am also thankful to my colleagues

who have supported me during the study.

Signature of the Student

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 Bonafide Certificate

This is to certify that Mr. Jashwant Singh Katheat a student of ICFAI National College

has submitted this project on “Technology used in railways: contribution to the growth

of country ” as a partial fulfillment of MBA Program at INC-Mira Road, Thane, under

the guidance of Mrs. Debjani Banerjee.

Signature

(Principal)

ICFAI UNIVERSITY

Signature

(Examiner)

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 Introduction

Indian Railways is one of the largest systems in the world. With a modest beginning in
India on April 16, 1853, when the first wheels rolled on rails from Bombay to Thane, the
Indian Railways has emerged today as the main vehicle for socio-economic development
of the country. It has also absorbed advances in railway technology in tune with the
requirement of moving large volume of passenger and freight traffic.

Indian Railway consists of an extensive network spread over 109,221 kms covering 6906
stations. Operating on three gauges – brad gauge (1676 mm), meter gauge (1000 mm)
and narrow gauge (762 and 610 mm), trains in India carry about 17.7 million passengers
and 1.49 million tones of freight every day.

Management of Indian Railways

Indian Railway is a department of Government and the Ministry of Railways functions
under the guidelines of Minister for Railways assisted by Minister of State for Railways.
The policy formation and management of Indian Railway Board comprises Chairman and
six functional members. Nine subsidiary organizations under the Ministry of Railways
which is IRCON, RITES, CONCOR, RCIL, RVNL, MRVC, IRFC, and KRCL undertake
specialized jobs contributing to Indian Railways growth and progress. RITES and
IRCON have their business abroad also.

Perspective Plan and Thrust Areas

The growing demand of transport, in general, is directly related to the growth of
economy, the mobility of the population and other related factors. The Indian economy in
the last few years has seen a robust growth and is expected to grow at the same rate but
due to recession the growth rate of the country has decrease. Indian Railway has planned
to carry the traffic offered by the buoyancy in the economy. The increased output of basic
industries such as power, steel, cement, fertilizers etc., is foreseen as necessitating
facilities for bulk transport in which Railways have a comparative advantage. The
increasing rate of urbanization was also expected to generate demand for raped transit
system.

The production of wagons during this period is targeted to increase from 6,600 per
annum to nearly 15,000 (vehicle units) and diesel and electric locomotives from 202 to
about 480. More importantly, through modernization of the network and technological up
gradation of rolling stock, the capacity of the newly constructed track and rolling stock
has increased significantly. Production of covered and open wagons of new design has
since commenced. This will result in a 78 percent increase in capacity of goods rakes
comprising of new design covered wagons as compared with the old stock. These trains
can now carry a load of 4100 tonnes compared with the earlier load of 2300 tonnes. The
capacity of the freight trains comprising of open wagons with new design will also be 22
per cent more than before. Similarly, the capacity of passenger trains has also been
increased.

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The previous fiscal 2007-08 registering a growth of 9 percent, Railways loaded 794
million tonnes, which was 66 million tonnes more than the loading in 2006-07. Freight
and passenger earnings grew at 14 and 15 percent respectively. Total traffic earnings also
increased by 15 percent to reach Rs 71,645 cr. The cash surplus before dividend
increased from the 2006-07 level of Rs 20,338 cr to Rs 25,006 cr. The plan expenditure
increased to Rs 28,980 cr compared with Rs 25,002 cr in 2006-07.

Contributing to Modern Market Economy

Since its inception, the Indian Railways has served to integrate the fragmented markets
and thereby, stimulating the emergence of a modern market economy. It connects
industrial production centres with markets and with sources of raw materials and
facilitates industrial development and link agricultural production centres with distant
markets. It provides rapid, reliable and cost-effective bulk transportation to the energy
sector, to move coal from the coal fields to power plants and petroleum products from
refineries to consumption centres. It links places, enabling large-scale, rapid and low-cost
movement of people across the length and breadth of the country. In the process, the
Indian Railways has become a symbol of national integration and a strategic instrument
for enhancing our defence preparedness.

The Indian Railways contributes to India's economic development, accounting for about
one per cent of the GNP and the backbone of freight needs of the core sector. It accounts
for six per cent of the total employment in the organised sector directly and an additional
2.5 per cent indirectly through its dependent organisations. It has in vested significantly
in health, education, housing and sanitation. With its vast network of schools and
investment in training, the Indian Railways plays an important role in human resource
development. The Indian Railways, with nearly 63,000 route kilometres fulfils the
country's transport needs, particularly, in respect of long-distance passenger and goods
traffic. Freight trains carry nearly 1.2 million tonnes of originating goods and 7,500
passenger trains carry nearly 12 million passengers every day.

Freight and passenger traffic carried by the Indian Railways has recorded an impressive
growth ever since Independence. While the input indices in terms of route kms,
locomotives, passenger coaches and wagon capacity have only doubled during this
period, the traffic output indices have increased by six times. These achievements were
due to selective inputs of affordable technology, adoption of innovative operational
strategies, phased reduction of staff and operating costs and intensive monitoring of
movements and maintenance areas.

The Railways has developed indigenous capacity for rolling stock manufacture, including
state-of-the-art electric and diesel locomotives and high-speed passenger coaches. It has
introduced high-speed Rajdhani and Shatabdi Express trains and Mass Rapid Transit
Systems in the metropolitan areas.

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Commissioning of the Konkan Railway, extension of Electric Traction to cover 30 per
cent of the broad gauge network, gauge conversion of about 8,000 kms. and provision of
about 15,000 kms of double/multiple lines are some of the major achievements. It has
computerised passenger reservation facility covering 95 per cent of the workload. It has
constructed bridges - engineering marvels across major rivers like the Ganga, Godavari
and Brahmputra.

Modern Technology

The Railways plans to introduce modern technology in various spheres of its working. It
aims at a stronger track structure with heavier and metallurgic ally superior rails, higher
horse power, state-of-the-art electric and diesel locomotives, light and comfortable
passenger coaches of modular construction with high speed bogies and lighter wagons
with improved bogies with higher speeds and better payload. Other steps are solid state
inter-locking, block proving by axle counters, centralized electronic interlocking,
universal emergency communication and train radio in the areas of signaling and safety,
optic fiber and digital microwave in the area of communication, dual voltage three-phase
drive Electric Multiple Units for suburban services and Diesel Multiple Units (DMUs)
and Main Line Electric Multiple Units (MEMUs) for mass intra-urban and suburban
traffic. The Indian Railways is also planning to realize the potential of information
technology in all areas of railway management and operations to cut costs and improve
efficiency and safety.

IT innovation in Passenger services

In 1985, the IR launched its first passenger reservation system IMPRESS (Integrated
Multi-train Passenger Reservation System) as a pilot project in New Delhi. Developed by
Computer Maintenance Corporation Pvt. Ltd.(CMC), it was the first Online Transaction
Processing (OLTP) system of the IR.

Online: Railways on the Web

The Indian Railways launched the online reservation system in August 2002, under the
aegis of IRCTC (Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation), the marketing arm
organization’s that handled the catering and tourism-related functions. The online
reservation system was an extension of the PRS system and served as an interface
between the users and the PRS. With its Web-based interface, passengers could enquire
information about trains, find out their reservation status and also book tickets online.

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Radio Frequency Identification (FRID) Technology

Benefits of RFID System for Railways

1. Apart from man-power saving, RFID based coach information will be faster and
accurate.
2. By providing RFID readers at all enroute stations, the input from RFID based
system can be integrated directly with the charting software so that the manual
entry of Train arrival/departure details can be dispensed with.
3. Online monitoring of critical parameter, of rolling stock for safety and
maintenance decisions.
4. Information of passenger trains to update existing servers for customer interface
(NTES, Visual displays at stations, Web-based information etc).
5. If all the rolling stock is fitted with RFID tags, wagon/coach census can be
dispensed with.
6. RFID tags in wagon will furnish accurate information and the present method of
manual entry of data in FOIS can be dispensed with.

The use of RFID system will certainly improve the efficacy of FOIS/COIS apart from the
costs saving aspect. RFID based rolling stock information system will serve as a cost-
effective alternative to the present block proving axle counters. RFID system captures the
rolling stock details at the point of origin and provides effective,, faster and ac curate
information for multifarious purposes like Coach guidance system for station display,
arrival/departure information for charting and NTES system as a replacement to station
indication system inside the coaches, coach/wagon details for RPF (security aspects), and
asset maintenance information of rolling stock etc.

In brief the operating results for the previous fiscal 2007-08. Registering a growth of 9
percent, Railways loaded 794 million tonnes, which was 66 million tonnes more than the
loading in 2006-07. Freight and passenger earnings grew at 14 and 15 percent
respectively. Total traffic earnings also increased by 15 percent to reach Rs 71,645 cr.
The cash surplus before dividend increased from the 2006-07 level of Rs 20,338 cr to Rs
25,006 cr. The plan expenditure increased to Rs 28,980 cr compared with Rs 25,002 cr in
2006-07.

The Budget Estimates for goods earnings, passenger earnings, sundry other earnings and
other coaching earnings have been kept at Rs.59,059cr, 25,000cr, Rs. 6,000 cr and Rs.
3,000 cr respectively in 2009-10. The Gross Traffic Receipts have been projected at Rs .
93,159 cr, exceeding the Revised Estimates for the current year by Rs 10,766 cr.
16. Sir, the Ordinary Working Expenses have been kept at Rs. 62,900 cr in 2009-10
which are Rs. 7,900 cr more than the Revised Estimates for 2008-09. This is mainly due
to payment of 60 percent of the arrears to the staff in view of the recommendations of the
Sixth Pay Commission. The total Working Expenses are estimated at Rs 83,600 cr. The
cash surplus before dividend is expected to be Rs 18,847 cr and the operating ratio 89.9.