Railways on rent

With Sheikh Rasheed having taken charge as Minister for Railways, will the future of Pakistan Railways be brighter under the new government? The decision in itself is a disappointment. If there was anyone looking for a symbol to confirm that ‘New Pakistan’ is just ‘Old Pakistan,’ Sheikh Rasheed as minister for Railways is proof. Rasheed had previously served in the same position in the last two years of the Musharraf dictatorship without distinction. Will the reluctant minister for railways, who has said he wanted the interior ministry instead, do better this time round? On the positive, Rasheed knows the railways inside out. But his own track record, combined with the lack of imagination displayed in his early plans, does not bode well. current promises include ending the Rs40 billion debt, doubling freight trade, creating 20,000 jobs, building 5,000 new homes for employees, upgrading 32 railway stations, e-ticketing and, essentially, renting every nook and cranny of the railways infrastructure. It is this last part that seems to be the hallmark of the so-called ‘economic revival plan’ of the PTI government. Rasheed even claimed a ‘willingness to rent out railway tracks.’ This is a worrying approach that barely constitutes an economic plan.

The real meat of reviving the railways will be connected to increasing the freight trade. This is the right priority. The collapse of Pakistan Railways began in the Zia era, when the creation of the National Logistics Company led to the forced transfer of freight from trains to trucks. With the promise of CPEC on the cards, what is needed is an imaginative strategy that puts the railways back in the heart of Pakistan’s new transit economy. Within this context, the first decision has been to put all Pakistan Railways rest houses on sale. While this would come at little concern to the public, one wonders if another campaign – circa 2011 – to ‘reclaim railways land’ directed at katchi abadis will take place. Rasheed has already warned ‘illegal occupants’ to vacate railways lands. Railways documents confirm that the bulk of occupied railways land is in possession of other government bodies, including the security forces. It is unlikely that the Railways will reclaim land from the bigger fish. What is more worrying is the ‘rent everything’ approach to fixing state institutions that every PTI minister is peddling. This is not how you fix public-sector institutions. This is how you strip them of everything that could fix them.