Co-develop technologies with India, Prabhu tells foreign firms

Railways to get over $140 billion investment in the next five years

vishwas

Vishwas Dass | May 4, 2017 | New Delhi


#Railways   #Suresh Prabhu   #RDSO   #foreign firms   #technology   #AK Mital  


 Railway minister Suresh Prabhu has urged global technology players to come forward to co-develop technologies with India.

“India is not just another destination where we can import technology and use them,” Prabhu said while inaugurating Research Designs and Standards Origanisation’s (RDSO) international conclave on Global Technology Conference in New Delhi.
 
Prabhu said India offers good opportunities to international firms to co-develop technologies for the railways.
 
“Global firms should try to develop cutting edge technologies with their Indian counterpart, (whether it is) private or government entities. India is a big market for the global suppliers of technology at the same time it is important to understand that make in India is one part and develop in India is another,” the minister said on Thursday.
 
He admitted that Indian Railways lagged behind in the race of modernisation because of lack of investment. He, however, said that now the railways has stepped up investments and is having a clear cut five year roadmap.
 
“I am optimistic that in these five years we would invest over $140 billion. We should try to put in $300 billion into the railways (over the next 10 years). There is a plan of investing around $450 billion in the next 15 years into the railways to expect huge transformation in the Indian Railways at par with global railways,” Prabhu said.
 
He laid emphasis on exploiting cutting edge technology and modernising the railways for the betterment of rail users. He said that railways across the world are upgrading themselves and evolving which should prompt Indian Railways to learn such modern technologies and use them for day to day operations.
 
“RDSO will have to ensure that the railways adopt cutting edge technologies in the shortest possible time. We must set some deadlines to conclude how we should proceed about it,” he said.
 
“Look at the seriousness of the Indian Railways in implementing new reforms and therefore, the global players should try to co-develop technologies,” he added.
 
The conference covered issues like enhanced safety, reduced in-service failures and automated Health monitoring & Inspection, capacity enhancement and congestion reduction and enhanced customer service. Over 50 speakers from India and abroad gave their presentations on various subjects.
 
Railway board chairman A K Mital spoke of how Indian Railways lagged behind other developed countries due to lack of technology development and implementation.
 
“Indian Railways came into being around 165 years back. The technology available with the Indian Railways at that time was almost of the same standard as was available in abroad. But, now we have lagged behind substantially behind other developed countries. There have been changes in the Indian Railways but those have been marginal. We used to have tie-ups with foreign collaborators to develop technology, but the pace was very slow,” Mital said.
 
He said country like China did not have high speed trains but they got it from Japan, Germany and France and adopted, assimilated and improved them before they started exporting it. “We have been good at accepting technology and assimilating, but we have not improved upon that.”
 

Comments

 

Other News

GST revenue in May clocks 12% y-o-y growth

The gross Good & Services Tax (GST) revenue collected in the month of May, 2023 is ₹1,57,090 crore of which CGST is ₹28,411 crore, SGST is ₹35,828 crore, IGST is ₹81,363 crore (including ₹41,772 crore collected on import of goods) and cess is ₹11,489 crore (including ₹1,057 crore collecte

Need local solutions to climate change: P Velrasu of BMC

Climate change rising temperature and sea levels are posing new risks for coastal cities. With population growth rate of 1%- 2% in India every year, Mumbai too is growing and is population will double from 20 million to 40 million in the coming years. The city is also at the risk of rising sea level. It ne

Civil Services 2022 Top 20 felicitated

Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science and Technology, MoS PMO, Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Space and MoS Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, Dr Jitendra Singh on Tuesday interacted with and felicitated the first 20 All India Toppers of IAS/ Civil Services Exam 20

Boost to offshore wind energy projects

In a major decision, the Government has decided to grant waiver of ISTS charges to Off-Shore Wind Projects and extend the waiver to Green Hydrogen/Green Ammonia. This decision has been taken to facilitate wider execution of offshore wind energy initiatives, to promote the expansion of Green Hydrogen / Gree

Duty of stakeholders to provide cost effective, alternate energy fuels: Gadkari

Urging use of alternative and cost effective fuels to reduce pollution caused by vehicles, union road transport and highways minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said finding cost-effective fuels is the need of the hour and underlined that use of fuels like bio-CNG and green hydrogen help in protecting the e

Record production of rice, wheat, and sugarcane estimated

The foodgrain production of 3305.34 lakh tonnes is estimated in the current agricultural year 2022-23 – higher by 149.18 LMT as compared to the previous year, according to the Third Advance Estimates of production of major crops released by the ministry of agriculture and farmers welfare.

Visionary Talk: Amitabh Gupta, Pune Police Commissioner with Kailashnath Adhikari, MD, Governance Now


Archives

Current Issue

Opinion

Facebook Twitter Google Plus Linkedin Subscribe Newsletter

Twitter