And if all this was to be renewed and replaced, it will cost the Railways an estimated amount of Rs 15,054 crore at current costs. With mounting arrears and continuing delays, the cost is rising each day. The Railways have been unable to replace and renew their obsolete and decaying assets, jeopardising the safety of over two million passengers who travel on Indian trains everyday.

Officials feel that with limited resources and low priority accordedto renewal of assets, the situation is bound to get worse. The arrears of track renewal, for example, which were about 6000 km in 1978, had already increased to 13,000 km on the broad gauge alone.

``Crores of rupees are spent every year on conversion of track from narrow to broad gauge which is not even required from the safety point of view. What is required is maintenance and renewal of tracks. Ill-maintained and old tracks are susceptible to fractures, causing derailments. Speed restrictions have to be put for trains travelling on these tracks, leading to delays and disruption of traffic,'' said an official.

It is now a matter of record that rail fracture, poor rail material and track maintenance led to the Khanna train disaster last year, amply justifying the need for timely track maintenance and renewal, he added.

Another area requiring urgent attention from Railways are the bridges declared ``distressed'', that is, needing immediate rehabilitation through special repairs or rebuilding. ``Apartfrom these distressed bridges, there are thousands more which can collapse. A bridge which was constructed on Eastern Railway in 1925 and converted into a flat top slab in 1986, collapsed in 1997. And this was not even one of the distressed ones,'' said an official.

According to officials, the priorities of railway management were warped. ``The allocations to the Depreciation Reserve Fund (DRF) -- supposed to be used exclusively for asset renewal -- have been going down over the years. From 12 per cent of the total budget in the year 1990-91, it has dwindled to just over a measly five per cent in 1998-99. And if the inflation factor is taken into account, the situation is much worse,'' the official explained.

The Railway Safety Review Committee, which gave its report late last month, took a serious view of the decaying assets and suggested that the prime focus of the railways should be on ``consolidation and upgradation of the essential infrastructure and assets rather than on populist but financiallyruinous projects.'' The report further recommended a time bound plan to clear the arrears as also for fresh accruals.

But a senior official said that the politicians often forced the Railways to invest in financially unviable projects. The Committee also took this factor into account, stating that the government should compensate the Railways, if they were asked to invest in a project which would never make profit,``as is the case in most countries of the world.''

The Committee strongly suggested that over-aged signalling gear be replaced within two-to-three years on the busy routes and on condition basis on others.