PTI: The Railways is developing a common digital platform integrating information from all departments as a roadmap for the future for bringing transparency in the system and enabling the public transporter to save about Rs 60,000 crore.
Besides, the entire supply and procurement chain of Railways will be digitised to curb corruption. "Our entire supply chain is being digitised. Payment will be made electronically and procurement will also be made electronically. It will curb corruption," Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu told PTI in an interaction.
Spelling out his vision for the Railways, Prabhu said, "We are also doing ERP - enterprise resource planning - a complete digitisation process. All rail operations will be online. It aims to save about Rs 60,000 crore, according toindustry estimates." Enterprise resource planning system will be an IT-based platform for system-wide integration and planning.
Referring to the congestion problems, he said though rail traffic has increased 16 times after independence, the infrastructure did not grow even four times. "As a consequence, we are operating 150 to 160 per cent of our capacity which is recipe for disaster." Currently 60 per cent of rail traffic is handled on 16 per cent of the network. "So obviously there were congestions and it affected the revenue stream also. We are not been able to capture more traffic," he said.