Railway ministry proposes ‘Srestha’ as R&D holding company

The railway ministry proposes to set up a R&D organisation - Special Railway Establishment for Strategic Technology & Holistic Advancement (SRESTHA) to drive long term research of the railways while the RDSO will now focus only on day to day issues.

Announcing this while presenting the railway budget, railway minister Suresh Prabhu said SRESTHA will be headed by an eminent scientist reporting directly to chairman, Railway Board and will be staffed with scientists and a limited number of railway experts. RDSO functioning will be made totally transparent with time bound results.

The railway minister also proposed the Aekikaran - consolidation of holding companies of the Railways. Prabhu said the companies owned by Indian Railway are its assets with immense future potential. ''We propose to examine the feasibility of bringing most of these companies under an umbrella of a holding company, which would provide the necessary strength for leveraging the combined resources as also in providing the much needed flexibility in utilising the strength of each of the subsidiaries,'' he said.

The railway minister said that for ensuring delivery of quality services to its customers, Indian Railways needs to be equipped with modern and cutting edge technology. ''Priority areas of the Railways like high speed rail, heavy haul, rolling stock and signalling require us to collaborate with the best in the world.'' In the short term, we have partnered with some of the best railways to develop indigenous capability in these areas. To institutionalise and take forward such cooperation in key technology areas, the government is working on a Foreign Rail Technology Cooperation Scheme (FRTCS), he added.

SUTRA to optimise investment decisions

Prabhu also announced that a dedicated, cross functional team, called Special Unit for Transportation Research and Analytics (SUTRA) be set up for carrying out detailed analytics leading to optimised investment decisions and operations.

SUTRA, to be set up with a Rs50 crore fund and with Ratan Tata as its head, will support Railways in internal and external innovation, he said.

This team would comprise professional analysts and best-in-class decision support systems and optimisation engines. The railway minister said that data backed decision making is a hallmark of great institutions and Indian Railway, which collects over 100 terabytes of data every year, is yet to gain business insights from this.

Prabhu said a sum of Rs50 crore has been set aside for providing innovation grants to employees, start-ups and growth oriented small businesses to support internal and external innovation. The initiative would be administered by an Innovation Committee comprising reputed investors, representatives from National Academy of Indian Railways, Railway Board and 'Kayakalp' headed by Ratan Tata. A program management structure will be put in place to manage this initiative.