NATIONAL RAIL PLAN
WHY IN NEWS?
- Recently, Government has issued the Draft Final Report of the National Rail Plan.
- The Plan aims at providing a long term perspective planning for augmenting the Railway Network.
OBJECTIVES
- To create capacity ahead of demand by 2030, which in turn would cater to growth in demand right up to 2050.
- To increase the modal share of Railways from 27% currently to 45% in freight by 2030 as part of a national commitment to reduce Carbon emission and to continue to sustain it.
- To assess the actual demand in freight and passenger sectors, a yearlong survey was conducted over hundred representative locations by survey teams spread all over the country.
- Forecast growth of traffic in both freight and passenger year on year up to 2030 and on a decadal basis up to 2050.
- Formulate strategies based on both operational capacities and commercial policy initiatives to increase modal share of the Railways in freight to 45% by 2030.
- Reduce transit time of freight substantially by increasing average speed of freight trains from present 22Kmph to 50Kmph.
- Reduce overall cost of Rail transportation by nearly 30% and pass on the benefits to the customers.
- As part of the National Rail Plan, Vision 2024 has been launched for accelerated implementation of certain critical projects by 2024 such as:
- 100% electrification.
- Multitracking of congested routes.
- Upgradation of speed to 160 kmph on Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai routes.
- Upgradation of speed to 130kmph on all other Golden Quadrilateral-Golden Diagonal (GQ/GD) routes.
- Elimination of all Level Crossings on all GQ/GD route.
e-NAM (NATIONAL AGRICULTURE MARKET)
- More than 69 crore Farmers & 1.55 Lakh traders are registered on e-NAM platform.
e-NAM
- E-NAM (National Agriculture Market) is an online trading platform for agriculture produce aiming to help farmers, traders, and buyers with online trading and getting a better price by smooth marketing.
- Small Farmers Agribusiness Consortium (SFAC) is the lead agency for implementing eNAM under the aegis of Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare, Government of India.
ADVANTAGES
- For the farmers,NAM promises more options for sale. It would increase his access to markets through warehouse-based sales and thus obviate the need to transport his produce to the mandi.
- For the local traderin the mandi / market, NAM offers the opportunity to access a larger national market for secondary trading.
- Bulk buyers, processors, exporters etc.benefit from being able to participate directly in trading at the local mandi / market level through the NAM platform, thereby reducing their intermediation costs.