Coronation of a carcass

Business Express or Bourgeoisie Express?

“This is a milestone in railways history,” the elected leader of the people said before cutting the red tape. He was surrounded by dignitaries, businessmen, local and foreign journalists: all keen to take a peek into the future of the Pakistan Railways (PR).

Pakistan’s elite had gathered to launch a train for itself. And it was time to rejoice. All had gathered to coronate the carcass it had produced. But hush…no one was to speak of the past.

Chug, chug, chug – the train had departed from the Lahore Railway Station. As they got aboard, a foreign journalist snarked, “A security guard pointing a gun at your chest may not be a perk of first-class travel in the West, but it is all part of the service on Pakistan’s gleaming Business Express.” But on days of celebration, elites never care about mild snark.

Chug, chug, chug – the train pulled into the Karachi Cantt Station. Garlands, cameras, journalists, ministers awaited the arrivals. On a separate side at the station, railways workers also stood protesting. When the reports came out, the voice of the railway workers was silenced.

On the same day, the PR had destroyed the homes of hundreds of people in an anti-encroachment campaign claiming to implement the SC order of vacating security forces from railways land. No one spoke about this.

The Business Express train, contracted to a company known as Four Brothers International, with a CEO of its own, was the new hope for the Pakistan Railways. A hope that could have only been come up with in a state of collective amnesia.

If one asks those celebrating the premature re-birth of the Pakistan Railways, “who killed the Pakistan Railways?,” the answer mumbled will boil down to: non-paying passengers, inefficient workers and corrupt politicians.

But the real story of the PR demise is incomplete without adding: non-thinking bureaucrats, greedy generals and the alienated bourgeoisie of Pakistan.

If we take a short historical journey, the Pakistan Railways, a public enterprise according to its constitution (let it be reminded), was almost breaking even before the Zia dictatorship set up the National Logistics Cell, a military-run transport and construction company, in 1978. Freight was transferred from railway freight bogeys to 16-wheelers imported by the NLC. When Zia died travelling in an airplane (not train), the railways had begun to lose $400,000 a day.

At this point, it was the World Bank, not the bureaucracy, that thought: the PR must be privatised. The bureaucracy merely consented and became the instrument of pushing the WB agenda. The idea implemented had four cornerstones: pull back infrastructure investment, sack workers, move to a public-private partnership and move to privatise the railways.

“We should have given the railways to a foreign company for free in the 1990s. The WB told us New Zealand implemented the model and it was very successful,” a senior official in the 1990s Privatisation Commission told this writer with bizarre confidence only recently. But the WB’s own reports at the end of the 1990s admitted the infrastructure investment pull-back had hurt the railways more as it entered the 2000s.

The trouble is that the public-private partnership model being celebrated with the launch of the Business Express in 2012 was tried and tested two decades ago when the Lahore-Narowal and Lahore-Faisalabad lines were handed to a private operator. The matter ended with the private operator filing a lawsuit against the railways whose bills ran into millions.

The history lesson of the railways is sobering but the launch of the Business Express shows that no one is learning. There was blind joy accompanying the trains’ maiden journey but the business statistics of the train belie that. With a capacity of 486 passengers; day one saw 150 passengers, day two saw 50% ticket confirmations and day three saw 125 passengers aboard the train. In a climate where only about 40% of regular trains are functioning, the Business Express ticket, at Rs 5000 one-way, is priced way out of the range of the regular railways customers (middle to lower middle class).

The Business Express CEO also issued a warning that got muffled by the congratulations: “We might not meet costs in February since we are paying Pakistan Railways Rs 3.04 million per journey.” While overtly the Rs 1.15 billion annual payment promised to railways is an impressive contract, but reports have already filtered through that the Business Express is 4-days – or Rs 12.16 million in debt.

Railway unions have also cried foul play at the Rs 5,000 ticket, which they say is Rs 1,400 more than was contracted, and Rs 3,600 more than what economy class passengers pay in the few Karachi-Lahore trains still operational.

The only milestone the Business Express train truly represents is that its launch represents the point from which trains will stop being accessible to the millions of lower-middle class and poor citizens that actually use them everyday.

Those are the focus of the successful model that has been adopted across the border. To them, the railways is not exotic travel, it is necessary travel. The Business Express is designed to offer the ‘exotic.’ It does not fulfil existing demand; it intends to create new demand where there is none.

Somehow, amidst the furore around the launch of the Business Express, everyone has failed to ask: does the mere fact that the train has been launched make it a success and the model worthy of replication?

The Pakistan Railways thinks so and has announced it will privatise four more trains within the next month.

The irony was not understood that the much maligned railways minister upon receiving the Business Express at Karachi asked, “Where is the Rs 11.1 billion bailout promised in 2010?” Spent well, it seems as the Rs 200 million spent on this train, the bailout could have revived the railways as a public enterprise.

But the dignitaries that left the Karachi Cantt Station having travelled aboard the Business Express, they were the new saviours of the Pakistan Railways; the very people that had coronated its decaying carcass.

The writer is a staff member. He blogs at voiceamidstsilence.blogspot.com and can be contacted at [email protected]