150 years of railway but no celebration in sight
View(s):Colleagues who worked in neighbouring India, particularly the bustling commercial capital Mumbai, speak enthusiastically about the efficiency of the railroad.
Most workers – big or small; ordinary workers or CEOs – commute by train to the city from distances as far as 40 to 80 km covering the distance in minutes due to the speed of the trains and the frequency. Almost every 4 minutes during rush hours (morning and evening), a train pulls into a station. It’s crowded no doubt, and packed to capacity. Yet for a 30 km ride, the distance takes less than 20 minutes. Furthermore in stations in the periphery, there are rows and rows of cheap 3-wheelers (or taxis in the city) that take you home or wherever without waiting at a bus halt. The system, through crowded and cramped, is perfect and connectivity (transportation to your destination by road) is assured. CEOs leave their posh cars in special parking lots in faraway destinations, travel to the city by taxi and return home by train and collect their cars at the parking lot; a crowded but still efficient system.
Where does Sri Lanka stand today in rail transportation? While focus is mostly on roads, a special report by former Transport Secretary and Economist Dr. Lalithasiri Gunaruwan proclaims, Sri Lanka has ‘lost’ it in the search for a cheap and viable transportation system. The country is spending billions on new roads while ignoring an expenditure of one fourth of the cost (in millions) and more efficient too, on developing the railway network.
To add insult to injury, Sri Lankan authorities have either completely forgotten that 2014 marks 150 years of the beginnings of the railroad network or conveniently chosen to ignore it, rather than celebrate an occasion that helped build the country’s agriculture economy in the 19th century.
The Sri Lanka Railway Department cannot forget this date as its own website under the section “History” says this: “Rail was introduced in Sri Lanka in 1864 to transport coffee from plantations in the hill country district of Kandy to the port city of Colombo on its way to Europe and the world market. The coffee blight of 1871 destroyed many a fine plantation and tea replaced coffee. With the development of tea plantations in the 1880s, the joint stock companies swallowed up the former individual proprietorship of the coffee era. Under corporate ownership and management control by companies, the process of production of tea became more sophisticated and needed more and more railways built to the Kandyan highlands. To send tea to Colombo and to transport labour, machinery, manure, rice and foodstuff, etc to Kandy, another 100 miles of railways were constructed in the tea planting districts to serve the expanding tea domain.”
Thankfully, the Business Times stumbled on a ‘moment of (forgotten) history’ of this stupendous feat of engineering only after a retired Railway Engineer raised the issue at a recent Colombo discussion on the Sri Lanka Railway.
In today’s world, the corporate world makes a big song and dance about an anniversary just to celebrate the event and use it as a marketing and branding gimmick. For example if many years ago, anniversaries were treated like special occasions and marked on the 10th, 25th, 75th anniversary etc: Today every year – 8th, 9th,18th, 19th, 22nd or 31st is celebrated grandly in a meaningless exercise – all for the sake of profiling the brand. An anniversary except for 1O years, 25 years (silver) or 50 years (golden) is a celebration. Today every year is an anniversary and no space in newspapers to fill these meaningless events; it’s like celebrating a birthday.
Less of that however and more about the state of play in the railways: At that recent Colombo discussion on the railways, Ranjith Dissanayake, an engineer who served the railway for 39 years, said the Institution of Engineers had submitted a proposal to the government on electrification of the railways some time back but there has no response or follow-up.
He also expressed disappointment that there appears to be no celebration in sight to mark an auspicious day – 27 December 2014 when 150 years ago on that day, the first train took off. On his own, the patriotic Dissanayake is releasing two books on October 30th to mark the event. These are true Sri Lankans, not the pseudo ones who pretend to love their country when all they love is; how much money or power could be made from such ‘love and affection’.
Every time you analyse the railway, you think of the loss of opportunity cost and huge savings to the country and its people. Less cost means less taxes and on the other hand speedier transport to get to your destination. Some years back the implementation of a scheme where car owners left their vehicles at a parking lot in Moratuwa and took a special shuttle bus service to the city and back, failed as road traffic congestion must have delayed their trip. On the other hand if the same principle was applied to the train service to the city from Moratuwa with more comfortable compartments and more trains running, the scheme would have succeeded.
While we are building highways, expressways and new link roads, spending billions of rupees, Sri Lanka is still struggling to get new rails on the road. The semi-luxury express train from the Colombo International Airport to the capital introduced to mark a special event is no more. Either it was not marketed properly or the authorities simply don’t care.
No doubt the railroad is the cheapest form of transport and proven in any city. But in Sri Lanka? The country is still struggling to built its first mono rail with proposals and offers being bandied around for the past 10 years, and no clear indication that one would get off the ground as in today’s world of unsolicited contracts there is more that meets the eye in finalizing a deal.
While at the Colombo seminar, Priyal Perera, a former Railways General Manager, pointed out the enormous cost of building the expressway at Rs 1 billion per kilometer and that a new railroad would have been much cheaper, Dr. Gunaruwan, in his article, refers to recent comments by Indian High Commissioner Y.K. Sinha where the latter has expressed disappointment over Sri Lankan’s ‘lack of gratitude’ to India’s contribution to Indian reconstruction of the northern railway. But, Dr. Gunaruwan points out that the high commissioner didn’t talk about the credit facility that was given to this project which Sri Lanka has to pay with interest: A simple loan at high interest rates furthermore with the use of Indian workers at the expense of Sri Lankan workers. If it was grant or free money, then there is an obligation on the part of Sri Lanka to recognize this ‘gift’. In this case, this is not a gift but a loan on commercial terms. No one thanks a bank for taking a housing loan, car loan or wedding loan, for that matter. On the other hand, the Japanese, some years back, did a survey here to ascertain why their grant or free money was not being sufficiently appreciated by Sri Lankans while there were accolades for others! That is fair enough.
Another valuable point from Dr. Gunaruwan that needs repeating: “Should Sri Lanka Railway, having reconstructed the railway track of 13 km between Vavunia and Omantai by 2010 at a cost of less than Rs. 50 million a kilometre using her own money and technical capabilities, pay over Rs. 250 million a kilometre through borrowings from India, get it done by Indian contractors making the Sri Lankan engineering and technical skills redundant, while, at the same time, putting the country into a pathetic situation where the lender appears to be seeking gratitude?”
The entire issue boils down to the lack of use of expertise in specialized fields by qualified Sri Lankans and decisions being made by a selected few in the interests of the entire country. Expansion of the railroad would have cost far less than the road network that is in place (this is not arguing that roads are less important), and better connectivity from the stations to the respective places of work by shuttle buses or cheap taxis would reduce large spaces needed for road construction, congestion on the already, clogged city roads, and reduce environmental pollution.
From Kuala Lumpur international airport, most local and foreign travellers take an express train to the city which is faster and more comfortable than travelling by road. There are many such examples.
When the tea industry celebrates its 150th year, in around three years there are bound to be celebrations throughout the year. The Chamber of Commerce, a private body, marked its 150th anniversary on a grand scale.
In the case of the 150th anniversary of the Sri Lanka Railway, there should be a grand celebration, a series of conferences on the role of the railway in today’s transportation systems in the world, a museum of artifacts and memorabilia and an invitation to some of the older generation of engineers and drivers (some of the them British) to a celebration that should be something to remember. As always, it would only be through President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s intervention that this could happen (cutting through red-tape, budget preparations, elections, etc). And, as concerned Sri Lankans, this is an appeal to the President to start a quick process to celebrate this event on a grand scale with an exhibition for the sake of the present generation and future generations. If not for the railway, Sri Lanka may not have had tea – which is now the country’s premier brew and stimulant for any class of people.