Railways to undergo organisational restructuring

The union cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi approved the transformational organisational restructuring of the Indian Railways, aimed at in achieving government’s vision of “making Indian Railways the growth engine of India's vikas yatra.”

Under the reorganisation plan, the existing eight Group A services of the Railways will be unified into a central service called Indian Railway Management Service (IRMS).

Railway board will no longer be organised on departmental lines, and replaced with a leaner structure organised on functional lines. It will be headed by Chairman Railway Board (CRB) who will be the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) with 4 members and some independent members.

Unification of services has been recommended by various committees for reforming Railways and are being undertaken with support and consensus of Railway officers, after a two-day conference `Parivartan Sangoshthi’ held on 7 and 8 December 2019.

Railways is embarking on an ambitious programme to modernise and provide the highest standards of safety, speed and services to the passengers with a proposed investment of Rs50,00,000 crore over the next 12 years. This requires speed and scale, and a unified, agile organisation to work single-mindedly on this task and capable of responding to challenges. 

The proposed reforms are part of ongoing reforms that have been undertaken under the present government, which also include merger of Rail Budget with Union Budget, delegation of powers to empower GMs and field officers, allowing competitive operators to run trains etc.

Unlike railway systems the world over, which are mostly corporatised, Indian Railways is managed by the government directly. It is organised into various departments such as Traffic, Civil, Mechanical, Electrical, Signal & Telecom, Stores, Personnel, and Accounts etc. These departments are vertically separated from top to bottom and are headed by a secretary level officer (member) in the Railway Board. This organisation of the department runs deep down to the grassroots level of the Railways. Unification of services will end this 'departmentalism', promote smooth working of Railways, expedite decision making, create a coherent vision for organisation and promote rational decision making.

Unification of services has been recommended by various committees for reforming Railways including - the Prakash Tandon Committee (1994), Rakesh Mohan Committee (2001), Sam Pitroda Committee (2012) and Bibek Debroy Committee (2015).

Railway Board held an extraordinary meeting on 8 December, and recommended a number of reforms, including the ones mentioned.

The modalities and unification of the services will be worked out by the Ministry of Railways in consultation with DoPT with the approval of Alternate Mechanism to be appointed by cabinet in order to ensure fairness and transparency. The process shall be completed within a year.

The newly recruited officers will come from Engineering and non-Engineering disciplines as per need and posted as per their aptitude and specialisation to allow them to specialise in one field, develop an overall perspective, and prepare them to take up general management responsibilities at senior levels. Selection for the general management positions shall be through a merit-based system.

Railway board will no longer be organised on departmental lines, and replaced with a leaner structure organised on functional lines. It will have a Chairman, who will act as 'Chief Executive Officer (CEO)' along with 4 Members responsible for Infrastructure, Operations & Business Development, Rolling Stock and Finance respectively. The Chairman shall be the cadre controlling officer responsible for Human resources (HR) with assistance from a DG (HR). 3 Apex level posts shall be surrendered from Railway Board and all the remaining posts of the Railway Board shall be open to all officers regardless of the service to which they belonged. The Board will also have some independent Members (the number to be decided by competent authority from time to time), who will be highly distinguished professionals with deep knowledge and 30 years of experience including at the top levels in industry, finance, economics and management fields. The Independent members will help Railway Board in setting a strategic direction. The restructured Board will start functioning after approval of the Board taking due care to ensure that officers are posted in the restructured Board or adjusted in the same pay and rank till their retirement.