Demand is the desire of a buyer which is accompanied by the ability to pay for a particular commodity at a specific price. On the other hand, if we talk about supply then supply is basically the quantity of the commodity that is made available to the consumers by the producers at a specified price. Demand and supply mainly have inverse relationship which states that when demand increases supply decreases and when supply increases demand decreases which is vise a versa.
Demand and Supply in Indian Railways
The future of Indian Railways depends on a large extend on how it meets up to the rising transport demand and the increasing pressure from competitive transportation models. It has been always seen that the demand of Indian Railways is always more than the railways could actually supply. Due to the increasing rate of population more and more people are adding up to the passenger segment of Indian Railways which is not duly met. As due to the growth of the country more and more people are engaged in work outside their hometown which forces them to travel through train twice a day in regular basis. The rise in demand can be easily pointed out in metro cities where the condition is really pathetic.
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Though Indian Railways is planning to adopt some of the strategies like focus on increasing the rail capacity for passengers and freight, more electrification and remodeling more trains for short distance passenger traffic. The Railways is also trying to follow a strategy to meet the high unmet demand. As said by Pillai, “Building rail transport capacity has been a high time lag due to the long gestation period in building of the infrastructure projects and in land acquisition. So, the priority is given to argument the capacity of trunk routes”.
Passenger services in India take two third of rail capacity and the fright services take up the other one third. If we talk about revenue then the case is the reverse where fright accounts to two third of the revenue.
Focus on Freight
It is a high time now when fright traffic needs to be increased as said by Pillai. This is what needs to be focused on so that the railways could serve the economy better. The demand of rail fright movement is limitless and there is very less space for growth for all modes of transport like coastal shipping, air road transport and inland waterways.
As there is no shortage of demand so the challenge here is to keep a pace with the demand. The Railways is planning for two freight corridors which would make a lot of difference to coal and port traffic.
The other emphasis is to improve the short distance passenger traffic which should be improved by improving the short distance train which is also known as distributed power trains or mainline electric multiple units. Focus is also put on trains that accelerate and decelerate and also to electrification of trains.
Electrification
As said by our earlier Railway Board Chairman VK Yadav, Indian Railways needs to focus on electrification to meet up the electrification demand domestically and not by importing crude.
Demand Due to Touting and Black-Marketing
It has been seen that Indian Railways is now the only organization left in which touting and black marketing is still prevailing. It has been seen that Indian Railways is now only an organization in which quota system is still existing quota system has been eradicated from All the departments but still not from Indian Railways. Indian Railways has passed a very bad days and now it is the time to decide what measures should be taken for the elimination of black marketing in train ticketing. Black marketing in tickets is basically because of the disbalance between demand and supply. Now, this is the factor when a proper management of supply and demand is required demand is not very high that it cannot be managed in fact every person who wants to travel has to travel in one other way.
Steps That Can Be Taken to Manage Demand
- There are various are special trains but they are not very popular with the regular passengers so measures should be taken so that not only the leftover passengers but everybody should travel by the special trains to reduce unnecessary crowd.
- Indian Railways should do some home and marketing work to uplift all the trains and to bring them in an equal status.
- Indian Railway should try to release the summer and winter and festival trains in advance looking up to the traffic of different directions.
- Indian Railway need to run special train non-stop from one end to the other with very few commercial stoppages. Specially in Metro Areas where it is seen people hanging out of the trains as it is very crowded.
- Indian Railway should provide facility for seat selection which is prevailing with international flights.
- Reservation of booking of the special trains should start earlier than conventional trains and effort should be put to achieve minimum 95% passenger-kilometres of the total passenger-kilometre capacity.
- The journey by special train should be make more enjoyable so that it attracts customers by providing freebies like water bottles magazine etc.
Demand of Indian Railways During Covid-19 Situation
With the Covid-19 rise in cases it has been seen that various states are demanding to supply around 960 isolation coaches to treat the patients. Not only due to the demand of isolation centers but demand has also gone up due to the to and foe movement of labors, migrant workers and other passengers who were travelling back home.
Railway activity is growing more than any other country with the movement of passengers reaching up to 40% of global movement stated in the ‘Future of Rail Report’. Railway activities have measured in billion passenger km which is amongst the highest in the world second only to China in passenger movement and forth in freight movements. Therefore, it can be seen that the demand for Indian Railways is huge and rail needs to work a lot upon this to balance up the demand and supply pattern.
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