Railways in severe financial crisis, says Trivedi Panel

After two years of healthy operations, a severe financial crisis has again gripped Indian Railways (IR), says a parliamentary panel headed by former Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi. Rebutting the government´s talk of a visible turnaround in operations, it has highlighted declining system productivity, rise in unit cost of operation and an unrealistic Operating Ratio (OR) target, based on ¨textbook solutions¨. The panel lauded IR for staging a turnaround to achieve 76 OR in 2007-08. ¨Unfortunately, it is again under a severe financial crisis. Its OR – money spent to earn Rs 100 –
has deteriorated to 93.6, the ratio of net revenue to capital is 5.6 per cent and the surplus was only Rs 3,740 crore in 2013-14,¨ the committee said.