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    <p><strong>Webinar on </strong></p>
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    <p><strong>National Rail Plan-Fast Track India towards Atma Nirbhar Bharat</strong></p>
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    <p><strong><u>DATE: 10th March 2021</u></strong></p>
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    <p style="text-align:justify;">ASSOCHAM organized a Webinar on &lsquo;</strong><strong>National Rail Plan-Fast Track India towards Atma Nirbhar Bharat</strong><strong>&rsquo; on March 10, 2021. The welcome address was given by </strong><strong>  Vivek Lohia, Chairman, National Council on Railways, ASSOCHAM</strong><strong>. Other Key Panellists included </strong><strong>  Anshul Gupta, General Manager, North East Frontier Railway</strong><strong>; </strong><strong>  V Shanker, Executive Director - Planning, Ministry of Railways;   Sushil Nowal, Senior Vice President &ndash; Logistics &amp; Planning, JSW Steel Limited; Dr. Manoj Singh, Executive Director- Traffic Transportation (Freight), Ministry of Railways;   Manish Puri, MD, RailRunner Innovations Private Limited; Surendra Khare, Sr. GM, Jindal Rail Infra Ltd;   Nanduri Srinivas, Director &ndash; Operations &amp; Business Development, DFCCIL;   Saurabh Sood, Managing Director, GATX India;   Lalit Tejwani, CMO, Hind Rectifiers Limited;   Amit Agarwal, Vice President &ndash; Sales Marketing &amp; Service, Amber Enterprises Pvt Ltd.;   Subodh Kumar, Sr. GM, Welspun Enterprises Limited;   C L Sah, General Manager, RITES Ltd., and   Mangal Dev, Director, Hitachi India Pvt Ltd.</strong></p>
    <p style="text-align:justify;"><strong>  K N Ramesh, Co-Chairman, National Council on Railways, ASSOCHAM &amp; Executive Director, BEML Limited gave the concluding address.. </strong><strong>The session was moderated by   Sanjeev Kumar, Co-Chairman, National Council on Railways, ASSOCHAM &amp; COO, Progress Rail Innovations Private Limited</strong><strong>.</strong></p>

    <p style="text-align:justify;"><strong>
     Vivek Lohia </strong><strong>said that &ldquo;the </strong><strong>Rail sector has vast scope for growth. Railways has come out with the National Railway Plan, which lays emphasis to increase the market share of Indian Railways from the present 28 per cent to 42 per cent by FY 2031. It seeks to serve passengers and attract them from alternative modes of transportation. The overall long-term rail development plan has been stated and efficiencies in the railway infrastructure have been identified under this plan. The plan prioritizes the projects and evaluates the funding requirement and the financial strategies for Indian Railways. Steps like DFCs enabling private participation in railways, the introduction of high-speed rails, new and improved technologies, and forward-looking policies will not only help Indian Railways increase its market share compared to alternative modes of mobility like road and water transport but also completely transform Indian Railways to a true world-class transportation system counted amongst best in the world. The freight cost in India is significantly higher around 7 per cent and the global average is 3%, so there is a significant scope of reduction of this cost for the Indian economy to move towards 5 trillion benchmarks. The national rail plan is in the right direction towards achieving this road map. </strong></p>
    
    <p style="text-align:justify;"><strong>  V Shanker said that &ldquo;as other sectors like aviation have become competitive, there was a need to create a plan to make railways also competitive. The huge unmet demand gradually led to roads, which led to a fall in the share of railways. There is a need to increase railway share from 28 % to 45% and also to reduce theoverall cost of logistics. The objective of the plan is to create demand to bring in a surge in capacity, infrastructure and also enhance rail freight share ahead of its demand. Also to develop capacity by 2030 that will cater to growing demand up to 2050.</strong></p>
    <p ><strong>The objective is to provide an overall long term rail development plan in passenger and freight areas, to assess present and future modal share of railways; to study the rail infrastructure deficiencies and future Infrastructure requirements, demand forecast and its implication on the congested network; identifications of options, evaluation, and prioritization of projects and finally to the assessment of funding requirements and financing strategies. The plan will help in reducing the cost of rail transport by 30 per cent - across the cost spectrum, bringing the infrastructure and business planning on the same platform and lastly the target under the national rail plan will focus on data points &ndash; a commodity to customer migration.</strong></p>
 
    <p style="text-align:justify;"><strong>  Anshul Gupta, General Manager, Northeast Frontier Railway said that &ldquo;the focus is on how demands are changing by increasing supply through infrastructure development with a special focus on the northeast frontier region. To ready with forthcoming demand by 2030, we should be able to create infrastructure not only to meet the existing and forthcoming demand but also demand which will be arising in 2050. The Railways can become a growth driver for the Indian economy if we follow these guidelines. On North-East Frontier Railway, speeds are very low and model shares are about 26 per cent because of a lot of infrastructure bottlenecks in this railway zone. Under this plan in the next 10 to 15 years, the northeast region will be a super-hub of economic activities.</strong></p>

    <p style="text-align:justify;"><strong>  Sanjeev Kumar said that &ldquo;the kind of exercise that the Government has done with National Rail Plan has probably done for the first time in the history of Indian Railways. It is very futuristic as industry members appreciate the vision and intent of the Government. We are talking about developing capacity infrastructure in such a manner that we build the capacity by 2030 and that will cater to growing demand by 2050. It is a great initiative because most of the time we see any infrastructure sector as we start building the capacity once the demand has come up as in case of roads, real estate, office infrastructure, or any other infrastructure sector has seen demand driving the capacity. Looking at the various funding options and work done by Indian Railways if we achieve 60 per cent, it is a great achievement. It is actually transit capacity enhancement and service provision. It will increase the predictability of customers whether it is freight customers or passengers for an increase of speed.</strong></p>

  
    <p style="text-align:justify;"><strong>Following major issues and suggestions emerged during the discussions:</strong></p>

    <p style="text-align:justify;"><strong>If Railways can help in developing tourism circuits with the help of the private sector, a lot of economic activity can be generated in the northeast area. A lot of economic and industrial activities have started with Sikkim as it is now a hub of pharmaceuticals and heavy engineering industry are being set up. The demand will increase in the next few years and how northeast region and other areas/ sections of railways meet this demand should be the focus areas of the National Rail Plan.&nbsp;</strong></p>

    <p style="text-align:justify;"><strong>Safety is important for Indian Railway as Train Collision Avoidance System (TCAS) will come in a big way for North East Frontier Railway and similarly, TCAS will be implemented on the entire railway network by 2024. It is indigenous technology and already RDSO has come with a plan for more vendors. It is a joint venture of Railway, RDSO, and private industry, and even foreign technology providers from Russia, Japan, and Europe have shown interest to tie up with RDSO to manufacture technology in India</strong></p>

    <p style="text-align:justify;"><strong>There is a need to achieve a target of doubling model share and there is a need to focus on additional commodities and increasing share of containers in domestic space as there are multiple ways of doing with pricing. Pricing is one way that railways can look and the sector is constantly engaged with railways on trying to achieve the right price to attract more traffic on to the rail.</strong></p>

    <p style="text-align:justify;"><strong>There is a need to use new technology and wagons which are bimodule in nature like the wagons which work as road vehicles as well as rail vehicles. This is a trial which has been done on Indian Railway system and some Companies are looking to bring this technology to India for future. These ideas are important to increase containerization.</strong></p>

    <p style="text-align:justify;"><strong>The National Rail Plan is an extremely ambitious plan which looks at a lot of investments in infrastructure whether it is in the form of new freight corridors and new terminals. This will provide ample opportunities to the private sector.</strong></p>
    <p><strong>Railways need to look forward to different and new modern models for private partnership and evolve models for different types of projects whether the project is for the development of terminals, or it is for rolling stock. There is an appetite for taking up terminals and rolling stock and should be looked for the encouragement of private participation.</strong></p>
   
    <p style="text-align:justify;"><strong>It is recommended to modify policies for providing opportunities to firms by placing developmental orders to help in establishing and developing the technological capabilities of firms. The Government of India&rsquo;s initiative to increase local content for developing local suppliers for technological development is essential.</strong></p>
   
    <p style="text-align:justify;"><strong>There should be a system under which nodal agencies resolve all queries. To do away with procedural delay in an efficient and transparent manner, a single-window channel is needed which may be done through a digital platform.</strong></p>
   
    <p style="text-align:justify;"><strong>A centralized agency should be created to efficiently address and evaluate new ideas for implementation and arrange requisite reports on such ventures.</strong></p>
   
    <p style="text-align:justify;"><strong>Dedicated Freight Corridor is looking forward to the facilities which will be developed by the partners. In this regard, DFC has already identified terminals as key points and in the first phase of development, there is an opportunity for private freight terminals. There are a lot of responses that are coming for the development of freight terminals on DFC land. DFC will be coming up with multi-modal logistics parks in Rewari and Kanpur and also in other places where land is in possession of DFC. It will be establishing benchmarks logistic parks which are multi-modal logistic parks and terminals which will serve as benchmarks for the industry to start.</strong></p>
    
    <p style="text-align:justify;"><strong>The Railway sector is required to increase cost competitiveness with the freight policies and by bringing additional commodities or by bringing a specialized vehicle for wagons in the system. If the challenges of cost and competence of the rail sector are resolved, it will enable people to move a larger proportion of goods on this network.</strong></p>
   
    <p style="text-align:justify;"><strong>The Webinar was attended by 150 representatives of the industry.</strong></p>