O J’s Corner

Think big for high-speed
rail-road corridor

India is a big country and its people are not weaklings. Let us not think for a moment that mega rail-road projects are beyond our capacity. Our forefathers were a bit reticent to acknowledge modern technology and development. But that attitude reflected only initial fear. Later they were quick to come to terms with modern developments like railway facilities.

Ernakulam-Kottayam and Kottayam-Kollam railway stretches were “terrains criss-crossed by perennial streams, hills and dales and backwater creeks”,according to T A Joseph, who was then the General Manager of Southern Railway. One can imagine the amount of cynicism expressed by various people those days to dream about materialisation of the metre-gauge line. None other than the-then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru laid the foundation stone for the line on December 24, 1952. Traffic between Kottayam and Ernakulam was opened in October 1956 and that between Kottayam and Kollam two years later. The line strengthened the physical, mental and moral integration of Travancore, Cochin and Malabar. The rail line ensured state integration more than half a century ago.

Now we have to look for national integration through railways. High-speed bullet trains have come to stay in various parts of the world. We cannot look askance at the fast developments overtaking the world. We have to be part of the larger global picture emblazoned before us. China has fly-over road length than the US now. We have not started devising multi-deck fly-overs for uninterrupted high-speed road traffic, which developed nations have made available for their people.

We don’t have to be cynical about launching a high-speed rail-road corridor worth more than Rs one lakh crore. The daily loss or gain in the Bombay Stock Exchange or the National Stock Exchange amounts to far greater figures than this estimate. Don’t we recognise our own financial strength? What is the harm in availing long-term loans from international funding agencies like Japanese Bank for International Co-operation at negligible rates of interest?

Major political parties may not find it easy to moot a project like this from Mumbai to Kanyakumari passing through Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, for fear of negative thinking from their own cadres elsewhere. But they can offer their weight behind the proposal put forward by P J Joseph. Or they can rechristen this as Jammu-Kanyakumari high-speed rail-road corridor. With the North-South Express Highways and the Golden Quadrilateral and link roads together, there would be a network covering the entire country.

Now Minister of State for Railways R. Velu has remarked that high cost and safety aspects may come in the way of setting up the corridor. P J Joseph has meaningfully repudiated this view. First of all, the concept of high-speed rail line has already been cleared by the Union Cabinet by way of Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Kolkata infrastructure and freight corridors. The cost factor, of Rs 50 crore per km, has not come in the way of sanctioning these mega projects. Mr Velu himself is clamouring for a high-speed line between Chennai and Coimbatore. As many as 40 MPs from various States have signed the request for the Western corridor. The Prime Minister has already ordered for a techno-economic survey. The architect of Konkan Railway, Delhi Metro and proposed Kochi Metro, E.Sreedharan, is optimistic about this corridor.

Let us lend our weight to P J Joseph’s effort to fulfil the dream project, which would provide all-round development for the entire country.