An Uncommon Bureaucrat

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One of Time magazine’s Asian heroes, ranked among India’s most powerful individuals in a survey by India Today, one of Time magazine’s Asian heroes and now CNN-IBN’s Indian of the year, 76-year-old E. Sreedharan is the Managing Director of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, its builder and executor.When have you heard of a bureaucrat who personally secured foreign funding and the cooperation of government agencies to build a public project. Bureaucratic red tape tried to delay his work, contractors would not meet commitments, corruption threatened to slow him down, still the project is within the budget and ahead of schedule.

Over six lakh Delhiites use the network to commute to work daily. A large part of the line is built under old Delhi, which contains buildings from the 17th century Mughal empire. Anybody who has visited Chandni Chowk in Delhi can imagine the difficulties the Metro Corporation must have faced in creating the underground network. It is clean, runs on time, was delivered ahead of schedule and was under budget. What surprises me more is that it offers an affordable alternative to commuters and still makes profit (partly due to the fact that the electricity that powers the system is government-subsidized).

It transports about 650,000 passengers daily which means 1.5m commuter trips each day off the roads. The result is 1,650 fewer buses on the roads, annual fuel savings of $110m and 30 per cent less air pollution(as claimed by Metro Officials). It is consumer friendly- has specially designed “sari brushes” on the escalators (installed to keep flowing garments from getting tangled in the mechanism). Guards show passengers how to use the electronic tokens on the entrance gates.Tickets are cheap, depending on the distance. Trains run roughly 10 minute intervals from 6 o’clock in the morning till 10 o’clock in the evening. Electronic indicator boards show the destination and time remaining for the next train arrival, just like most of London’s underground stations. Signs proclaim that photography, smoking and spitting is forbidden, and surprisingly, people honour that. No cigarette butts on the floors, no paan stained walls or corners. The sight of workers dusting the railings is rare in Delhi but you can see this happening in the Metro Stations. Escalators are not very common in Delhi except in the malls. Guards watch and help people to get on and off the escalators. Students, domestic helps, office goers everybody is benefitting from it.

With 56 kilometres of the network on track and only two more phases left to be completed, the project is running ahead of time and is strictly within budget. In just two more years before the Commonwealth games the high-speed train will hopefully be accessible to every resident of Delhi.

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Filed under Delhi, Delhi Metro, India, Indian of the Year, Shreedharan