IRCTC chugs ahead with PPP support

Rajni Hasija, CMD, IRCTC, says how PPP is proving to be a gamechanger for the Indian Railways, as the private sector can add expertise to any government project. Going forward PPP will be the best way for developing better infrastructure and boost tourism, she adds.

Nisha Verma

Rajni Hasija, Chairman & Managing Director, Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), believes that public private partnership (PPP) is the best way forward. “We all know that PPP model has become the essence now-a-days because of two reasons- finance & scalability and maintenance standards. We need to have a specialist on board to handle the issues and have a good investment, so that new projects could be launched. Railways, as we know, involves a lot of investment. Thus, recently we made humble beginnings, where we started with launching executive lounges at the stations, and invited investments from the public sector. In the second spree we started launching budget hotels, where we had also invited the participation of various sectors in creating a budget hotel. Our budget hotels at Lucknow, Kevadiya and Khajuraho are under construction, where good capital support is being given by IRCTC and participation has been received from the public sector also.”

She claimed that the public sector is specialized in doing certain activities. “The way they can do certain things, we as the government have challenges. This association becomes crucial between us and them to execute a project. A recently launched project of Bharat Gaurav also has minor participation from the private sector in a way that we are appointing a service provider for running the trains. These are the trains running on our theme-based circuits. Some participation has also been invited by IRCTC, so that they also become a part in executing the project and their accountability becomes more. Once the participation level gets increased and accountability increases, then the output is nearly welcome. There are good results too,” she said.

Also, she added, “In theme-based tourism, we know that we are saving time for customers by travelling at night and doing excursions in the day. Thus, the train must be comfortable and to the standards of the tourism department. Thus, we are doing many modifications in the pantry cars and making the journey more comfortable by creating salons or creating dining cars in the train, so that the passengers get some space to move around and be a little more comfortable. In this, we have noticed many times that not much competition is there, and private players don’t have much technical knowledge of the subject. Thus, handholding of the private partner is must, which IRCTC has been doing and we have been able to perform well also by delivering.”

She said that there is a little scepticism about the performance in railway tourism because it is a mass tourism. “It becomes different from other tourism where you must handle 700-800 guests at one time. Any change or delay in running of the trains may cause changes in the itinerary and that must be handled and executed beautifully. Otherwise, we are going to get complaints. Hence, the education of the private partner really helps and we have been pioneering that and have been very successful in executing that,” she claimed.