MINISTRY OF RAILWAYS

To build a seamless national cold supply chain for perishables, inclusive of milk, meat and fish
• It will be set up by Indian Railways through PPP arrangements.
• Following are the major initiatives:

o Refrigerated Parcel Vans: with carrying capacity of 17 tonnes for transportation of highly perishable parcel traffic procured through Rail Coach Factory Kapurthala.
o Reefer (Ventilated Insulated) Rail Containers: procured, through CONCOR, for movement of fruits and vegetables to different parts of the country.
o Cold Storage Facilities for Perishables: ‘Temperature controlled perishable cargo centres’ have been commissioned at Ghazipur Ghat (U.P), New Azadpur (Adarsh Nagar, Delhi) and Raja ka Talab (U.P) at Lasalgaon, Nasik (Maharashtra).
o There shall be refrigerated coaches in Express and Freight trains as well.

Transformation of Indian Railways through seven Mission mode activities.
It was launched in budget 2016-17 and envisages the following:
• Mission 25 Tonne: It aims to increase revenue by augmenting carrying capacity. To achieve this 10-20% freight loading will be done through 25-tonne axle-load wagons in 2016-17 and target movement of 70% of freight traffic on high axle load wagons by FY19-20.
• Mission Zero Accident: It comprises of two sub missions

a. Elimination of unmanned level crossings: The goal is to eliminate all unmanned level crossings on Broad Gauge in the next 3-4 years.
b. TCAS (Train Collision Avoidance System): An indigenous technology has been developed to prevent head on collisions and improve throughput by increasing average sectional speeds.

• Mission PACE (Procurement and Consumption Efficiency): This mission aims to improve our procurement and consumption practices to improve the quality of goods and services.
• Mission Raftaar: It targets doubling of average speeds of freights trains and increasing the average speed of superfast mail/express trains by 25 kmph in the next 5 years. Loco hauled passenger trains will be replaced by Mainline Electric Multiple Unit( MEMU) and Diesel Multiple unit (DEMU) coaches over the next five years. It will complement Mission 25 Tonne to increase throughput of the railway system.
• Mission Hundred: This mission will commission at least a hundred sidings (low-speed track section distinct from a running line or through route such as a main line or branch line or spur) in the next 2 years.
• Mission beyond book-keeping: It will establish an accounting system where outcomes can be tracked to inputs. This will transform IR as right accounting would determine right costing and hence right pricing and right outcomes.
• Mission Capacity Utilisation: It proposes to prepare a blueprint for making full use of the huge new capacity that will be created through two Dedicated Freight Corridors between Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Kolkata scheduled to be commissioned by 2019.

• To train every employee to understand the need and value of ethics in Personal and Public life.
• To deal with ethical dilemmas in life and Public Governance.
• It aims at sensitizing all railway employees about the need to adhere to good ethics and to maintain high standards of integrity at work.
• Talks and Lectures on the subject are being organised all over the Indian Railways today for this purpose.

Smart Freight Operation Optimisation & Real Time Information (SFOORTI) App for Freight Managers which provides features for monitoring and managing freight business using Geographic Information System (GIS) Views and Dashboard.

It is comprehensive training programme for all employees of Indian Railways to boost productivity & efficiency.

It has been started to upgrade the condition of Rajdhani and Shatabdi Express Trains.
The objective of Project Swarn is to significantly improve the passenger experience across 9 dimensions which include coach interiors, toilets, onboard cleanliness, staff behavior, catering, linen, punctuality, security, on-board entertainment.

It is first IT application to be launched on the RailCloud. It is the platform for resolution of service related grievances of serving and former railway employees.

• Alternate Train Accommodation Scheme – VIKALP was conceputalised with a view to provide confirmed accommodation to waitlisted passengers and also to ensure optimal utilisation of available accommodation.
• Wait listed passengers of a train can opt for confirmed accommodation in alternate trains.
• It is implemented for passengers of all train types and classes.

It has been setup in 2017-18 Budget with a corpus of ₹1 lakh crore over a period of five years for critical safety related works.

It has been developed for online reporting of issues pending with State Governments pertaining to infrastructural developmental projects which are being undertaken by different Railway agencies.

New R&D organisation to serve the future technology needs of Railways.
Indian Railways eprocurement system (IREPS)
• It is an official portal of Indian Railways, for procurement of goods, works and services, sales of material and leasing of assets through e-tendering, e-auctioning or reverse auction.
• It is developed and maintained by Centre for Railways Information System (CRIS).
• It is the largest G2B portal.
• It was awarded ‘Vigilance Excellence Award 2017’ by Central Vigilance Commission.
• Recently, its mobile application Aapoorti was launched.

Indian Railways has launched a new ‘Rail MADAD’ app for the purpose of speedy redressal of passengers’ complaints.

Indian Railways launched ‘Rail Sahyog’ web portal, which will provide a platform for the corporates and PSUs to contribute to creation of amenities at/near Railway Stations through Corporate Social Responsibility funds.

• The project involves the construction of six freight corridors traversing the entire country.
• Initially the construction of Eastern and Western DFCs is being undertaken.
• The other four corridors North-South (Delhi-Tamil Nadu), East-West (West Bengal-Maharashtra), East-South (West Bengal-Andhra Pradesh) and South-South (Tamil Nadu- Goa) are in planning stage.
• In 2006, the Government of India established a dedicated body, the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL), to implement the project.
• Once operational, the western and eastern corridors will increase the railway’s freight carrying capacity to around 2,300 million tonnes, up from 1,200 million tonnes at present, and help reduce cost of freight transportation.
• The construction of the western corridor is being fully funded by the Japanese International Cooperation Agency and the eastern corridor is being partially funded by the World Bank.

Shruti