RAILWAY SAMACHAR

The Sweet Smell of Corruption

KOLKATA : Fragrances with descriptions such as ‘sweet mandarin orange and tart grapefruit and lemon play with sweet vanilla’ have been installed to counter malodours in train coaches and toilets across the country. These scents and their dispensers appear to be of great national importance. Over the past five years, they have been purchased in huge quantities by Indian Railways, from only three Indian suppliers of one multinational company at ten times the cost. The Railway Board, Research Design and Standards Organization (RDSO), and supplier nexus, have joined hands to protect the sensitive nose of the Indian passenger, creating, in the process, a real stinker.

In 2005, RDSO advised Railways to install ‘odour control systems’ in AC coaches and toilets of trains, authorising only three Mumbai-based suppliers, Jade Consumer Products, S.R. Electronics, and Dinesh Kumar & Co., to supply these. It turns out these odour control products - Micro Burst and Auto Janitor - are brand names of one of the largest global players in the field, Technical Concepts, UK. And, the three suppliers authorized by RDSO are, as per Railways, the same three suppliers selected to supply the products in India by Technical Concepts. With competition thus jettisoned, a royal feast commenced.

In 2005 all zonal Railways began issuing ‘open’ works tenders for odour control systems, won always by the same three suppliers. Board Members would have one believe that for five years no one noticed that micro-bursts with an import cost of Rs 415 were being bought for as much as Rs 4,600. One phone call to London would have revealed the true price, but the independence and initiative of zonal material managers to fight inflated prices of suppliers has long been compromised by the Railway Board.

A complaint was in fact lodged by S.C. Railways in 2006-07, and the Central Vigilance Commission got involved. But, only a warning limited to that zone was issued against such purchases! Other zones have continued to purchase these systems at the same inflated prices for five years. As a result of this largesse, today Jade Consumer Products, partner to Technical Concepts, has become ‘India’s leading supplier of air care and hygiene solutions for away-from-home washrooms.’

Only in 2010, with crores of public funds already flushed down the procurement toilet and into the pockets of chosen suppliers, has a Railway Vigilance letter been sent to all Zonal Railways simply telling them not to buy these brands at ten times the cost and to look for RDSO specifications instead! The game of restricted competition is still so set that the RDSO specifications, as in numerous other cases, are designed to match brands.

According to this vigilance letter, of the three suppliers, only Jade has been importing these items from Technical Concepts and that the other two ‘might’ be supplying the products after buying them from Jade. Given this fact, and given that Zonal Railways have been buying a brand and not an item with specifications, there is no way of knowing what scents and what dispensers have been bought in lakhs by Railways in the past five years and whether two of the dealers have even supplied anything imported. Who are the Railway officers that benefited from this windfall for three suppliers?

More importantly, what is it in Railway Board administration that allows for corrupt bureaucrats to support such loot? A search for answers will point to some fundamental problems.

Source The Statesman, Kolkata