“Hey, we need to export twenty diesel locomotives to Pakistan.” My IRTS colleague sat opposite me in my office and told me.
“What?” I was surprised. ‘’Locomotives to Pakistan? Why?”
My friend told me that the Pakistanis needed them. “But, aren’t we ourselves short of diesel locos and don’t you guys in the Traffic Department keep asking me for more all the time? We don’t have any surplus to spare twenty working locomotives to anyone, let alone to Pakistan.” I told him.
Pat he replied, “There is an urgent demand from Pakistan Railways and we must help them.” I was shocked, “Help them? But aren’t they our adversary? Why should we be going out of the way to help a country that is inimical to us?”
This story can be told now since all the romantic ideas of ultimately winning the hearts across the Western border have evaporated. This narration, even a day before the Pahalgam attack, would have meant trouble for me from the powers that be. It was early 2013. Pakistan Railways were in doldrums. They had bought a hundred and fifty diesel locomotives from China just few years earlier and only thirty were left in working condition, i.e. an eighty percent fatality. They had poor maintenance practices and their procurement system for genuine spares was mired in corruption what with everything being handled by Colonels and Generals. The situation was so bad that even their all-weather friend, China, couldn’t help them. And here they were asking for help from India, and my friend, who had just visited Lahore, had a train-interchange meeting with them, was overwhelmed by their hospitality, and was trying to repay the biryani debt. He thought that in lieu of a few helpings of biryani, served in shiny brassware, the hostile country of Pakistan should be rewarded with diesel locomotives.
I told him that our locomotives were far too sophisticated for Pakistanis to operate and maintain. Very soon they too would fall into disrepair and then charges of India having cheated them and of corruption at both ends would become impossible to handle. He tried to assure me that the Pakistani diesel-sheds (depots) were well equipped to handle our locomotives. I told him that he was not an engineer and was neither capable nor authorised to certify that. Then came a deal sweetener, “We will send you to Lahore too to see their Moghalpura diesel-shed first hand.” I asked him who “WE” was and told him that I was happy with the biryani of Chandni Chowk and that I wanted none from Lahore.
Not to be dissuaded from his newfound love for Pakistan he sent me a file with the proposal. I wrote all the arguments as mentioned above but the file kept coming back to me like a bad penny to make me agree to spare twenty diesel-locomotives. He also came to my office many times trying to say that I should see a business opportunity in this proposal. I told him that diesel-locos are a transport infrastructure and that these could be used to move soldiers and equipment to our border in case of a war. If he wanted business with Pakistan we should be selling them television sets, umbrellas and Hawaii chappals instead. Would it make any strategic sense to ask our Border Roads Organisation to build roads on the Pakistani side of the border even if it made some twisted business sense?
This office-file battle of notings continued for about three months. In the meanwhile I was visited by the Railway Minister of Bangla Desh. It was rather unusual that a Minister from another country would visit the office chamber of a joint secretary level officer. The gentleman stood before me with folded hands, “Sir, I need forty metre-gauge diesel locomotives urgently. Madam Sheikh Hasina’s reelection depends on revamping our railway system.” “Given, Sir! I will do whatever possible to help you,” I told him.
Meter-gauge locomotives were lying surplus to our needs due to gauge conversion and could be given away at a low price to Bangla Desh. I went to my boss in the Rail Bhawan, the Member Mechanical, and told him, “Sir, I am being pressurised to spare broad-gauge locomotives to Pakistan, which I don’t want to give. And here is friendly country, Bangla Desh, pleading for help. Please, therefore, approve these forty for Bangla Desh.” He immediately agreed to send locos to Bangla Desh, which were despatched over the subsequent few months. Export of old diesel-locomotives, after reconditioning them, has been a profitable business for Indian Railways and RITES.
Meanwhile, the pressure to release twenty broad-gauge locos for Pakistan was unrelenting. The Foreign Ministry too came into the picture and the biryani diplomacy was at its peak. Somehow the contents of the file, which by this time had acquired some heft with all the arguments and counter-arguments, got leaked to the media. A newspaper, on the front page, severely criticised the move to export railway engines to Pakistan. The MEA was very upset. A quick, informal enquiry was held, and I was questioned about the leakage. Nothing came of it but the proposal was dropped. In any case a file in a government office passes through several hands - it was not a secret file after all. By now my Traffic friend, the Railway Ministry, the MEA, and probably the Pakistan Railway all got too frustrated with the never-ending file pushing exercise. Pakistan stopped pursuing the demand and Indian diesel locomotives never entered that country.
—-ooo—-
