The Indian government has tabled the ‘Indian Railways Vision 2020’ in 2009 with the aim to provide efficient, affordable, customer-focused and environmentally sustainable integrated transportation solutions.
The core objectives this Vision 2020 were
Providing compelling value to all customers and citizens through highly competitive high-quality services.
Expansion and modernization of Railway network to provide inclusive service remove bottleneck and create capacity. Improving productivity of assets and efficiency of operations through technological and managerial innovation.
Judicious reorganization of Railway’s activities into distinct business lines and profit centres.
Building a highly cohesive and motivated organization with emphasis on Human Capital.
Some of the basic challenges against the government’s vision was the capacity constrains as trunk routes of the railways comprising merely 16% of the network carry more than 50% of the traffic, safety standards and performances are weak, lower asset’s reliability, slower in speeds on track as compared to the global level, low technological upgradation, connectivity issues, supply side constraints, lower quality of services and so on.
The major achievements of the Indian railways from last decade includes-
First modern unreserved coach ‘Deen Dayalu’ with facilities like potable drinking water, mobile charging points and bio-toilets among others installed.
Heralding a new era of semi-high speed trains in the country like Gatiman Express.
Milestone in adoption of green fuel in Indian Railways, the first CNG train was launched on the Rewari-Rohtak section of Northern zone.
Privitisation of catering in trains
The Indian Railways introduced Spanish Talgo, a light train consuming 30 per cent less energy.
Operation augment services at stations to bring down the maximum time taken for buying a ticket at counters to five minutes
Wifi enabled railway platforms
Railways had set a target to install bio-toilets in all coaches by 2019.
