Holding charge of three major ministries that are heavily focussed towards Aatmanirbhar Bharat—Railways, Communications and Electronics & Information Technology—for the Government of India, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, in conversation with Business Today’s Siddharth Zarabi, shares his views on privatisation in railways, the government’s plans on BSNL and the PLI scheme on semiconductors, among other things. Edited excerpts:
There has been a record allocation for the railways in this Budget. As you talk about the allocation, can you also give us some sense about the achievements on the ground?
The record Budget allocation for railways of Rs 1.37 lakh crore for capital investment, is a great thing. The railways has been starved of investment for many decades. The trend started changing in 2014-16. Capital investment started increasing and capital investment in railways is so important. There is, of course, one major part which is passenger experience, because we’re getting close to 8.5 billion passenger trips every year. If you have to bring down the cost of logistics for the country then the share of railways has to increase from its current 26-27 percentage points to close to 40-45 percentage points. If there is a total railway economy, let’s say, then the cost of logistics will be 5-6 per cent. If there is a total road economy, then the cost of logistics will be 1719 per cent. The cost for the country is always the weighted average. So, we are at 13-14 per cent. We are a Rs 232 lakh crore GDP economy today. Even one percentage point reduction in cost of logistics means the country saves Rs 2.32 lakh crore. So, that is the real reason why we need to bring down the cost of logistics in railways and we have to step up investment in Indian Railways.
We see the continuing focus by the government’s spending from the Budget, but then we also look at some of the newer steps that you yourself have been taking in the railways. However, the word that one doesn’t get to hear often is private sector involvement.
Two parts to your question. First is the focus on capital investment and second is the private sector involvement in Indian Railways. Look, the railways is a very complex system. There are some countries where a railway is limited to cargo transportation like the US, Canada, parts of South America, Argentina, Brazil. These countries are very good at mineral transporation. Rest of the world, entire Europe, Southeast Asia, Japan, China, India, is basically carrying passengers as well as cargo. All these countries have the government as the key dominant player in the railways sector. I can sit with you and explain how complex it is. See, a road is basically a road but with railways there is the road, plus the track, electrification, signalling, station, plus the train which has to run on it. We cannot have one Hyundai and one Suzuki running in parallel. And nobody can just join it. It’s very, very complex. That’s the reason why the government has to play the dominant role and that is why there is absolutely no question of railway privatisation.
Even if the track, the main infrastructure, were to remain with the government, what prevents trains from being run by the private sector, offering services just as they do in Europe, on the same kind of railways that the Indian Railways is modelled on? There was talk about bidding out for those, what is the current status?
Look, passenger services are practically running at 50 per cent subsidy. Who would run a business with 50 per cent subsidy? That’s the experience all over the world—the experience in Europe, Japan is no different, the experience in Southeast Asia is equal, China also is following the same. Basically passenger services are almost everywhere seen as a social good. There’s an element of public good in that and that’s why they are subsidised by the governments all over the world.
Nitin Gadkari keeps talking about daily targets of achievements with respect to the highway roll-out. I wonder if you can offer a comparable figure of the work that you are putting in.
I would like to put it in a slightly different way. Highways always will have this straightforward number of kilometres of roads that you build. A large part of railway investment goes into doubling the lines. A significant part of railways capital investment goes into electrification, a very large chunk goes into the equivalent of resurfacing the road, which is re-laying the tracks because tracks have a life and the entire tracks have to be replaced. So a significant part of that goes into these activities. So laying new lines, which would be comparable to a highway, would always be a wrong way to compare the two. What’s important is that the entire passenger experience has to change. That’s what the Prime Minister’s vision for railways is. The entire passenger experience will change with three elements. First, stations. We have had very good success with Rani Kamlapati station in Bhopal and Gandhinagar station in Gandhinagar. Learning from these two redevelopment projects, because again when a train is moving at 100 kmph, the vibrations, the load which is there in all the structures, those are very complex calculations. Learning from these two experiments, now we are embarking on a large scale station redevelopment programme. Second, getting a totally new generation of trains. For years together we were running technology which was working on the next set of reforms, where many more old regulations which have lost their relevance in today’s world will also be cleaned from the slate.
You’ve already spoken about the fifth generation mobile broadband spectrum auctions happening this year. The government has in the past used auctions as a revenue exercise, and spectrum by becoming very expensive ultimately gets passed on to the consumer. How will 5G be priced?
Let’s take two numbers first. Globally, the average revenue per user is close to Rs 2,600-2,700 in most of the other geographies. We are close to Rs 300 as the average cost for the common consumer. So it’s not that our prices are very high compared to global standards. For sure we are significantly lower than the global cost standards. Two, there is a realisation throughout the world that telecom today and especially spectrum as a key enabler of telecom, has an element of public good. Third, our process of discovering the price is a very transparent process. TRAI is right now going through the final leg of its consultations. It would be unfair for me to comment on the pricing, but I hope and I am confident that the industry will be prepared for the 5G roll-out. But beyond this 5G roll-out, I wanted to highlight another point. The PM gave us a target. In the spirit of Aatmanirbhar Bharat, our entire technology stack for 5G has to be developed in India. After the great success of 4G core and 4G radio network, building upon that success, 5G core, 5G radio network, 5G telecom equipment and 5G handsets, the success is phenomenal. By the end of this year, we would have the entire technology stack which we prove in the country and then take it to the world, and challenge some of the biggest technology providers in telecom.
On the semiconductor plans, is Intel coming to India?
The semiconductor policy was launched last December 15 when the Cabinet approved it. Within 15 days, we launched all the schemes and we set up the portal. January 1 onwards, we started receiving the applications. I’m very happy to share with you that the response has been phenomenal. Throughout the world, the big players in the semiconductor industry have noticed one very major thing which is different compared to the rest of the world. We have given a clear assurance and a road map for 20 years, which is very different from ‘I’m willing to put in so many billions of dollars please come to my country’ kind of approach. Second, we have looked at the entire picture, not just silicon fab but display fab, compound semiconductors, design ecosystem. Above all, which the entire industry is appreciating, is that we have committed to prepare 85,000 semiconductor engineers. And we have already shortlisted the institutions in which they will be trained. We are working with AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) right now, to finalise the course curriculum. It’s something which is going to last, which will strengthen our country’s economy for many years.
That’s the vision of the PM. When he called me he said, “Ashwini ji bees saal ka sochna hai, chaar-panch saal ke hisab se sochna hi nahi hai” [Ashwini ji we have to think for 20 years, we don’t have to think for four-five years]. This is an industry where if you lay the foundation today, you will start getting the results in three years, four years, five years down the line. And if the results are good, the foundation is strong, the results will continue to give us buoyancy for the next many decades. So that’s the thought process. I wouldn’t take the name of any company. Yes, there is keen interest from almost all the major participants.
The perception is that India is fighting with all social media companies, making life difficult for them, not letting them do business in India, perhaps in the hope of home-grown giants. Would that perception be correct at all?
I frankly don’t think that perception is correct at all. I think the spirit of our government is to bring that balance between freedom of expression on the one hand, and protecting our society on the other hand. That balance has to be brought and that is what societies all over the world are discussing. End of the day, what matters is whether as a user of social media, I, my children, my family members, my society, my city, my village, my community, are they safe? Because in the yesteryears, in your magazine, India Today, an editor would always take out the stuff which is not good for the society, which is not publishable. In today’s world, in social media, there is no such control. There is no such editor. So self regulation is the first step which is very important. The regulations of 2021 basically put the onus on the platforms—so that if somebody is trying to put something which is not good for the society, you remove it yourselves. If somebody has a complaint against you, then you create an institutional mechanism for redressing that grievance. That is in a nutshell the 2021 guidelines. We have evolved over that. Today, there is a consensus building that the accountability has to increase. Even social media platforms are saying that we definitely would like to increase our accountability because end of the day, we wouldn’t like to be seen as multipliers of a problem. We would like to be seen as multipliers of ideas, as propagators of good thoughts rather than trying to increase the negative value in this society.
