Joins another elite club!

Indian Railways has one more feather in its cap. FY13 will be marked in history for the railways, not just for finally bringing about the much needed fare hikes but also for crossing the originating freight volume of one billion tones. It handled 1010 million tones during the fiscal.

This is an elite club and the other members are China, USA and Russia. And in terms of micro economics of this one billion freight, the East Central Railway (ECR) for the first time loaded a freight traffic of more than 100 m. Coal is the single largest item of traffic and the highest loading was from  South East Central Railway at 75%, East Coast Railway at 60%, East Central Railway at 56%. Its Dhanbad division alone accounts for nearly 97% of the total traffic, which means in turn that there will be tremendous pressure on the Grand Chord section, the 461-km long stretch between Asansol and Mughal Sarai.

Kudos to Indian Railways for getting into this club but this dependency on one commodity makes this whole math totally skewed. But with roadways also being used for most of the commodity transportation, this is bound to happen. There are complaints galore when it comes to travel by Indian Railways, quality has only gone down further but then, that is another never-ending story!