The way in which China has leveraged investments in its overall rail infrastructure, and not just in high-speed travel, to promote wider socio-economic goals offers important lessons for India.
If there is a global championship for running High Speed Rail (HSR) networks, China will win hands down. Japan may have been the pioneer and France an early starter, but China is the superpower in this game. A relatively late starter, China started its HSR programme 39 years after the Shinkansen first started operations in 1964. The Japanese Bullet Train network had the highest annual ridership among all such railways in the world until 2011, when the Chinese HSR, just eight years old at that time, surpassed the Shinkansen. Although the old warhorse started with speeds below 200 kilometres an hour, the modern definition of an HSR is any train system that travels at a minimum speed of 250 km/hr. In that race for speed the bullet train is expected to maintain a speed of 320-350 km/hr. In June 2017, a train with a maximum speed of 400 km/hr was unveiled on the Beijing-Shanghai line.
Fast passenger trains have been around for many years. The speed record for a steam locomotive was set in Britain in 1938 when a train achieved a top speed of 203 km/hr, although over a short stretch of less than a kilometre. Earlier, in Germany in 1933, the Flying Hamburger attained a top speed of 150 km/hr and an impressive commercial speed (speed at which the journey is completed, inclusive of stopping time at stations en route) of 130 km/hr. In 1938, a train between Bologna and Naples attained a commercial speed of 160 km/hr.
This story is from the October 13, 2017 edition of FRONTLINE.
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This story is from the October 13, 2017 edition of FRONTLINE.
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How Not To Handle An Epidemic
The lockdowns were meant to buy time to put in place appropriate health measures and contain the coronavirus’ spread, but they have failed to achieve the objective and heaped immense misery on the marginalised sections of society. India is still in the exponential phase of the COVID-19 infection and community transmission is a reality that the government refuses to accept.
Tragedy on foot
As the COVID-19-induced lockdown cuts the ground beneath their feet in Tamil Nadu, thousands of migrant workers are trudging along the highway to the relative safety of their upcountry homes.
Sarpanchs as game changers
Odisha manages to keep COVID-19 well under control because of the strong participation of panchayati raj institutions and the community at the grass-roots level under the leadership of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik.
Scapegoating China
As the COVID-19 death rate spikes and the economy tanks in the United States, Donald Trump and his advisers target China and the World Health Organisation with an eye to winning the forthcoming presidential election.
New worries
Kerala’s measured approach to the pandemic and lockdown has yielded results. But it still has to grapple with their huge economic impact on its economy, which it feels the Centre’s special financial relief package does little to alleviate.
No love lost for labour
Taking advantage of the lockdown and the inability of workers to organise protests, many State governments introduce sweeping changes to labour laws to the detriment of workers on the pretext of reviving production and boosting the economy.
Capital's Malthusian moment
In a world that needs substantial reorienting of production and distribution, Indian capital is resorting to a militant form of moribund neoliberalism to overcome its current crisis. In this pursuit of profit, it is ready and willing to throw into mortal peril millions whom it adjudicates as not worth their means—an admixture of social Darwinism born of capital’s avarice and brutalism spawned by Hindutva. .
Understanding migration
When governments and their plans are found to be blatantly wanting in addressing reverse migration, exercises such as the Ekta Parishad’s survey of migrant workers throughout India can be useful to work out creative long-lasting solutions.
Waiting for Jabalpur moment
The Supreme Court’s role in ensuring executive accountability during the ongoing lockdown leaves much to be desired. Standing in shining contrast is the record of some High Courts.
An empty package
The Modi regime, which has been unable to control the COVID-19 infection, restore economic activity and provide relief to millions exposed to starvation, trains its sights on Indian democracy, making use of the panic generated by fear and a lockdown that forecloses paths of resistance.
