Indian Railways News => | Topic started by greatindian on Sep 09, 2013 - 16:00:03 PM |
Title - Judging productivity in railwaysPosted by : greatindian on Sep 09, 2013 - 16:00:03 PM |
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Productivity, as commonly understood, measures how efficiently production inputs, such as labour and capital, are being used in an economy to produce a given level of output. For an industry it is a key source of growth and competitiveness, and is basic information for comparison, both in domestic and international markets. It is also used for analysing capacity utilisation and for planning future business strategies.Indian Railways had introduced the system of Productivity Linked Bonus (PLB) for its employees in 1979. The index, defined as the ratio of railways output (measured by the total freight tonne kilometres and a proportion of passenger kilometres) and input (measured by the total number of non-gazetted staff), determines the quantum of PLB payable for a year. A PLB of 78 days for 2010-11 was announced recently.The PLB, in its present form, is based entirely on physical parameters without any reference to the financial viability of the system. For example, the Railways paid PLB of 59 and 78 days respectively to its employees for the years 2001-02 and 2010-11 respectively. This may lead one to believe that the productivity of Indian Railways, and by implication its level of efficiency, improved by almost 30 per cent during this period. But, its operating ratios (reflecting the percentage of expenditure to revenue earned) for the two years, recorded distressingly high levels of 96% and 94.6% respectively, revealing that financially Indian Railways had continued to perform poorly, being neither better nor worse off in the two years compared. |