The Train 18 / Vande Bharat Model

 

Add good passenger handling, and this is the model for replication.

Shyam Ponappa  June 1 2023

Vande Bharat trains get deservedly good coverage nowadays. They provide the model for goal-oriented team achievement that is possible in infrastructure. This process requires extension to aspects of user experience to complete the end-to-end system. It needs the complement of passenger handling for total service delivery, comparable to orderly boarding and disembarkation for airlines, or the system for voting booths.

A former member of the Railway Board describes the project as conceived, planned and executed in record time by a team of inspired, talented, and committed Railway professionals of the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai.¹ Apart from the sanction by the then chairman of the Railway Board, A K Mittal, of two train sets budgeted at Rs 100 crore each, there was apparently little official support. These were completed on time, within budget.

 
Yet, just four years ago, after successful trials, the project was stalled by vigilance investigations that proved to be unwarranted against the leaders of the pioneering team of the “Train 18” project, later renamed “Vande Bharat”. The investigations found nothing, but the collateral damage was devastating for exceptional performers despite their being cleared of false charges.
 
Why “Train 18”? Because its champion, ICF General Manager Sudhanshu Mani, had 18 months left in service. His dream was to catch up on decades of established global practice at the ICF before retiring. The aim was to change the design of separate locomotives and coaches to a modern, single-unit train set capable of 180 km an hour without locomotives, with all power and service provision built into the undercarriage under the floor (for details see his book My Train 18 Story).

The ICF team rose to the challenge with good leadership, consultants, and vendor-partners, achieving what takes twice as long globally at half the cost. Successful trials at 180 km an hour of a train set with 80 per cent local manufacturing caught the Prime Minister’s attention, and two train sets began operation in 2019. The programme stopped abruptly because of vigilance action against the top team.²
 
The charges proved to be unfounded, and, after nearly three years, it seems as though the PM’s interest resulted in restarting the programme. Now, 18 train sets are operating as of May 25, 2023, with hundreds more planned. The performance of the trains occasionally elicits back-handed comments, such as being relatively slow (average speeds are more than 80 km/hour), that energy consumption is high, or that this would be nothing special in Germany, Japan, or China (the Financial Times)³, which is actually a compliment. The Vande Bharat is reportedly more energy-efficient than trains abroad, with average speeds on 14 routes published on April 20 ranging from 66 km an hour to 96 km an hour, with the median around 80 km an hour. By comparison, speeds on intercity routes under 300 km an hour in Europe in 2016 were as in the chart, with the median also at about 80 km an hour.

Reading Mr Mani’s book or watching his TEDx talk⁴ gives a sense of the degree of professionalism and teamwork that went into these outcomes. This is the achievement in terms of “hardware”. What of the passengers for whom it was made?

 
The design and manufacture of Train 18/Vande Bharat is exemplary for systems thinking and design, starting with the objective of a 180 km-an-hour train set with certain safety, quality, and comfort norms. The present emphasis on ramping up is promising. Yet more needs doing as always: Upgrading tracks to enable 200 km an hour at least, equipped with modern signalling, train sets with sleepers for longer distances, and barriers to prevent access to tracks. The scope and scale are monumental, and even more is needed beyond Vande Bharat for upgrading local passenger and intercity trains with better facilities.
 
Passengers who use these services do not have the benefit of an equivalent systems approach in their handling. The Railways have to take this step of setting the objective of convenience for passengers arriving at the station, embarking on these (or any other) trains, disembarking, and leaving the platform, to upgrade the customer experience hugely.
 
The process of embarking/disembarking on Vande Bharat trains is not organised. As the train is at the platform for a limited time, anxious passengers and porters rush to exit or enter helter-skelter. There appears to be no attempt to establish or maintain order. As for manufacturing, there need to be systems for passenger handling. Passengers arriving to embark on the train need a process, such as no well-wishers crowding the train, and queues instituted according to their coach number and seating order, half at the head end and half at the tail end of where each coach is expected to stop. Disembarkation needs to be managed first at both ends of carriages, with a clear passage to exit platforms. Embarkation needs to be arranged for each coach, such as having passengers from Seat No. 1 to the halfway number at the nearest doorway, and the other half at the farther doorway. With such procedures, passengers would have a much better experience with end-to-end services.
 
A systems approach in addressing train services for passengers is a paradigm worth applying with appropriate changes to other infrastructure and government services. The driving criterion needs to be clearly defined user-centric service experience, as against simply building more rail, or roads, or fibre networks. Processes need to be goal-oriented and require an end-to-end design of the hard and soft systems aspects as well their elements, followed by execution to standards, on firm timelines.

This template of goal-directed collaborative achievement deserves extension and replication in infrastructure and governance, using the talent and experience of such exemplars in providing leadership and guidance. There is then no need for overstatement, since the results will speak for themselves, as in the case of Train 18.
 

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Shyam (no space) Ponappa at gmail dot com

1. “Not by ‘Vande Bharat’ alone”.
https://www.thehindu.­com­/opinion/lead/not-by-vande-bharat-alone/article66786278.ece

2. “Controversies, vigilance probe bring Vande Bharat Express to a standstill” 

https://www.business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/vande-bharat-express-yet-to-leave-station-as-controversies-hit-project-119091601507_1.html

3. “India’s new railways project picks up speed.”
https://www.ft.com/content/77b1db06-4f 8c-4866-8f4a-4f489dce44cd 

4. https://www.ted.com/talks/%C2%ADsudhanshu_mani_the_j%20ourney_of_train_18

Telecom Reforms: Reducing Self-Imposed Barriers

 

Less restrictive regulations with better process discipline could improve broadband reach and functionality.

Shyam Ponappa   |   April 7, 2022 

Uncertainties with global supply chains are likely to persist even if geopolitical tensions ease in the coming months. With India’s dependence on energy imports of oil, gas, nuclear fuel, and materials such as cobalt, lithium and nickel for solar cells and batteries used in communications and information technology equipment and electric vehicles, we need to dedicate more focus and serious effort to fending for ourselves where possible over the longer term.

The ongoing processes of strategy formulation, execution and resource allocation necessarily involve trade-offs in choosing where and how to allocate time, capital, and human resources. In this context, advocates for services over manufacturing, or freewheeling opportunism, or those against performance-linked incentives (PLI) for manufacturing, may be glossing over the fact that our size and circumstances make for imperatives that could have been different if we were a smaller country, or at a different stage of development, but ultimately, only if it were a kinder and tidier world. Retaining a degree of autonomy requires a level of security in essentials, including in defence, food, and other areas. Our stage and state of development are also often overlooked, especially when commentators don’t tailor solutions to fit the context of our facts, including the culture/s, processes, and institutions, or the lack of them.

Two conditions in particular that hamper our capacity for enterprise and productivity need redress, besides social disharmony. One is an unsystematic approach, lacking goal-oriented, integrated planning and end-to-end execution. The second is regulatory constraints, often in the form of legacy holdovers that have not been reformulated to meet our present and anticipated requirements.

An example of the consequence of unsystematic practices is stranded electricity generation projects, despite potential users without adequate power, because transmission and distribution have not been built into the project “solution” as a prerequisite. Another example is the state of our broadband and telecommunications services, where many users have unreliable or inadequate access, because end-use delivery has not been successfully configured. A third instance is our highways, for which impressive statistics contrast with the highly uneven experience in using some of them

The open secret, of course, and the most difficult part, is to have a dedicated, end-to-end plan for projects, with the linkages thought through and provided for and executed in their entirety to achieve effective delivery without being distracted by new leads and schemes. Given the way technology linkages have developed, communications and information technology are key drivers for all technologies and infrastructure, as well as many aspects of superstructures. We sorely need pervasive, reliable, well-functioning networks. The criteria of good delivery and efficiency require policy reforms regarding the way spectrum is assigned, used, and paid for, how it is regulated for operator access, and how all network resources are optimally utilised for user benefit. That is the task, starting from where we are, with what we have.

For optimal service delivery, there are three aspects to the structure of our telecommunications requirements:

- The core network or backbone and skeleton,

- The distribution to user clusters beyond, and

- End-user connectivity within clusters.

At the first level, fibre networks are available in most urban and semi-urban centres, but in less than half of our gram sabhas or village-cluster centres. The criterion to be ensured is network quality for delivery standards including up-time, not just nominal connections. Rural coverage perhaps needs to be tackled systematically in sections, with realistic time frames and budgets, unalloyed by electioneering grandstanding and exaggerated claims that emphasise announcements over delivery and performance.

The second level is the extension and distribution of links from existing fibre networks within cities, and to villages in each cluster. Given continuing difficulties in completing the BharatNet fibre network to the numerous village clusters that don’t have fibre connections, a possible way to bridge this gap may be to enable and use high-capacity wireless links. Policies facilitating the use of viable wireless means do not exist even as these could improve network reach and functionality. Appropriate changes could enable the use of spectrum bands such as 60 GHz and 70-80 GHz for point-to-point fronthaul, mid-haul and backhaul. Six GHz could be enabled for high-speed Wi-Fi. Financial viability could be evaluated using modelling and simulation exercises.

Perhaps wireless links up to several kilometres to gram sabhas also need to be considered in place of fibre which has not been possible to install for years on end. In more remote cases, the use of satellite links may be a necessary expense, with the likely availability of such links with recent changes in policies. The third level needs a combination of fixed and wireless end-of-middle-mile links, with cellular or Wi-Fi user access.

Given the legacy of colonial-era laws, a conscious, imaginative effort may be useful, such as the use of a negative list as in trade agreements of prohibited items, with the rest open to consideration by due process when sought by service providers. This would enable, for instance, industry representatives mooting the consideration of 12 GHz for Wi-Fi going forward, on the lines of developments in the US, the European Union, or the UK.

For equipment and solutions, there is a product-and-services aspect for global as well as local markets that is much larger, which involves manufacturing and integrating services to deliver solutions. These avenues are closed off to our talent and enterprise because of our regulations. These regulations hamper us needlessly, forcing us to constrain ourselves in ways that other nations do not restrict their people. Enabling policies could remove these constraints, so that research, development and experimentation are facilitated for our vast talent pool. There is no other way in which we can hope for domestic production for local markets, for instance in wireless equipment, without prohibitive levels of imports.

If we have rapid facilitation of controlled trials and testing by authorised industrial and academic institutions, active development and proliferation of devices would be possible here. This would enable the design, development, and production of solutions for local use, as well as for the much larger global markets, e.g., for 5G applications, for which there is no domestic market yet.

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Shyam (no space) Ponappa at gmail dot com

Disclosure: The writer is associated with proposed wireless trials.

What's Needed Is User-Centric Design, Not Good Intentions

Designing goal-oriented, end-to-end integrated systems is critical to delivering what Indians need.

Shyam Ponappa / Jan 03, 2013

The inadequacy of essentials and conveniences around us results from a slack approach to both design and execution. We know we are deficient in execution, but we need to be more aware of deficiencies in approach and design. Good intentions, while important, cannot substitute for good systems design and execution.

Things That Work…

Simple aspects of everyday living that actually work in India can leave one wonderstruck. Like the daily newspapers, organised and delivered seamlessly, reasonably early in the day, almost regardless of where one lives provided it’s a city or town. Or the availability of milk, eggs, bread, vegetables, fruit, and whatever else for daily provisions. And this despite the supposed shortcomings of our logistics and organisation in the context of wholesale and retail markets. Some of the revolutions that we’ve lived through in the last two decades include the manifestation of such wonders, like the phenomenal and ubiquitous growth in the supply of dairy and poultry products.

On a different plane, as it were, are the changes in the quality of automobiles and the improvements in India’s roads, although patchy and considerably lagging. Likewise, there have been revolutions in mobile communications and in air travel, disregarding anomalies such as the horror of Mumbai airport on private airlines, with its incompetent cab mafia on arrival, and a disorganised and demeaning crush on departure, squeezing past crowded boarding gates. (This is the state of the commercial capital? Woe betide us — but I digress...) Another source of wonder is the performance of the Indian Railways. Much abused by exploitative politicians, given short shrift on everything from cleanliness and toilets to much else, overloaded by hapless passengers in desperate need of transportation. One can only marvel at these services.

…And Things That Don’t

And yet, there are debilitating areas that seem utterly intractable, like sanitation, water, power supply and communications services for data (apart from voice).

Comparing the state of sanitation or power with the railways, one might say the latter had the benefit of being set up as an integrated system since the 1850s, although deprived in recent times of systematic development and investment, and so reduced to decrepitude. By contrast, sanitation has been playing catch-up on our old, established society, behind the curve for hundreds of years, never having had the advantage of installation as ab initio systems. Open drains are an Indian feature, even in Delhi. A similar situation obtains in power supply, where the contradictions and inequities of piecemeal, encapsulated interventions that tried to address power generation first were followed by sporadic efforts to address transmission and distribution, with realpolitik all the while playing to the users’ self-indulgence of having it all without paying for it. This sense of entitlement without accountability has resulted in the vicious circle of “free power” that leads to no power, annihilating possibilities for improvement.

In communications services for data (broadband), we have a different kind of problem. For one, governments, citizens and activists don’t seem to get it that these services are as essential to infrastructure as energy and transportation. There is no logic to their exclusion, but it has taken the National Telecom Policy of 2012 (NTP-2012) to announce the objective that telecom is part of infrastructure, although the associated benefits, such as lower interest rates, are yet to follow.

User-Centric Systems

The malady with sectors such as power, communications and transport is that solutions seem to be designed without an integrated, end-to-end, goal-oriented perspective favouring users. For instance, otherwise successful initiatives like the Delhi Metro provide services from an islanded “product perspective” that is simply not user-centric in its orientation. This results in insufficient feeder buses, inadequate parking at the Metro stations, a gaggle of disorganised cycle-rickshaws at stations like Mayur Vihar, and so on. Instead of being an unadulterated blessing, a Metro station in the neighbourhood becomes a curse, because user needs are not treated as being central to the delivery of the service. Passengers are left floundering while people in the environs (like the denizens of Mayur Vihar) are left to fend for themselves. There is also the question of capacity and demand. Again, the “product perspective” results in overcrowding and other inconveniences. On the flip side, well-meaning though misguided critics attack attempts to build capacity in anticipation of demand, as was the Metro by proponents of a Bus Rapid Transit system pushing for the latter as a silver bullet instead of as an adjunct.

What Could Have Been, But Isn’t Yet

The Unique Identification Authority of India’s Aadhaar augured a potentially revolutionary electronic enabler. In practice, however, its design has been baffling. A brilliant concept – abstracting a smart identification number from a smart card – has been reduced to an identifier for cash transfers to bank accounts. The question is, why to bank accounts and not to transactions, whether for retail or for services, activated by a mobile phone? Kenya’s M-Pesa was the pioneer for mobile money transfer, subsequently enhanced to include interest earned on virtual accounts.* Introduced in India by ICICI Bank with Vodafone in November 2012 and State Bank of India in January 2013, not only would this be much more practicable as the majority of our population doesn’t have bank accounts, it would cost far less, while being much more convenient for users. It would obviate setting up millions of physical micro-accounts at relatively high cost at banks, as well as giving users proximate access to products and services.

Another puzzling aspect is the contradictory, sometimes changing signals about Aadhaar. It is supposedly voluntary, yet reportedly mandatory now for marriage registrations, yet not accepted by banks for account opening, nor by some mobile phone operators, nor for passport applications, nor for driver’s licences. And inexplicably, except as a ruse to garner votes from non-citizens, it is for all residents (who choose to apply?), and although it could include citizenship information, it doesn’t.

It is best to start out right, recognising that we need user-centric, end-to-end systems design and execution, and apply this approach across the board going forward.

shyam ponappa at gmail dot com

* http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2011/11/11/kenya-to-india-exporting-the-mobile-money-model   

http://www.indiainfoline.com/Markets/News/ICICI-Bank-and-Vodafone-India-announces-strategic-alliance-to-launch-m-pesa/5539284905