Indian Railways has achieved a milestone by linking the distant border state of Mizoram within the nation’s Northeast with the nationwide grid. The mission entailed laying tracks over inhospitable hilly terrain and overcoming a number of hurdles for over a decade earlier than it was lastly accomplished.
On September 13, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the 51.38-kilometer-long Bairabi-Sairang railway mission in Mizoram, greater than 172 years after the railways had been launched in India throughout colonial rule.
Mizoram would be the fourth state of the eight states within the Northeast to have its capital linked to the nationwide railway grid.
Union Minister for Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw termed the mission “very difficult” and its completion as “historic” for Mizoram.
Bairabi, close to the state’s border with Assam, was linked to the rail community as a meter-gauge station within the late Nineteen Eighties. In 2016, it was upgraded to broad gauge below the 83.55 km Kathakal-Bairabi Gauge Conversion Challenge. The preliminary survey for the Bairabi-Sairang line was sanctioned in 1999, however progress on the mission was sluggish owing to the hilly terrain by way of which the proposed alignment handed. Subsequently, the railway performed a reconnaissance engineering-cum-traffic survey, which was accomplished in 2006. The mission was lastly sanctioned in 2008 and implementation started six years later.
The Sairang-Bairabi railway mission is taken into account an engineering marvel, subsequent solely to the Chenab rail part within the Kashmir valley and the Pamban bridge in Tamil Nadu. Constructed at a price of over 80,000 million rupees (roughly $910 million), the monitor snakes by way of as many as 48 tunnels over 12.85 kilometers (8 miles) in complete, with 55 main bridges. The longest tunnel (No. 40) is 1.37 km (0.85 miles) and the monitor additionally has one of many tallest pier bridges over the Kurung river close to Sairang at 114 m above the bottom. Past the railway itself, practically 200 km of method roads had been constructed to ferry supplies for the mission. Electrification of the complete Bairabi-Sairang line is in progress and prone to be accomplished by the tip of this 12 months.
Kapinjal Kishore Sharma, chief public relations officer of North East Frontier Railways, advised the media that the mission confronted “large challenges,” from steady rainfall to the issue of transporting building supplies by way of distant areas. Regardless of the challenges, the mission was expedited with an “eco-sensitive method” by setting up extra tunnels and elevated viaducts to minimize deforestation and destruction of habitats. Twenty-six employees had been killed when a bridge collapsed two years in the past.
The Bairabi-Sairang railway line is predicted to have a profound affect on Mizoram’s financial system by decreasing transport prices in addition to producing jobs and tourism that might increase demand in motels, homestays, handicraft markets, and transport providers. The price of commodities is estimated to fall by a minimum of 20 %, making life within the state extra reasonably priced to the greater than 1,200,000 individuals of Mizoram.
Mizoram grows a spread of horticulture merchandise, together with orange, guava, pineapple, ginger and turmeric, however faces hurdles in promoting the merchandise exterior the state owing to transportation hurdles. At present, the post-harvest losses on account of lack of sufficient transport services within the northeastern area are estimated at round 25 to 30 %.
The brand new railway monitor might be a aid for most cancers sufferers because the state doesn’t have services for specialised therapies. By the way, Mizoram has the highest most cancers incidence price within the nation. For a lot of sufferers, remedy requires travelling to far-off locations akin to Guwahati or different components of the nation over lengthy distances by highway or by flight at exorbitant charges.
Connecting Mizoram with rail is an element of a bigger mission to hyperlink all state capitals within the northeastern area of the nation. Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, and Sikkim are the opposite states within the area whose capitals are but to be related with the railway community. Since 2014, allocations for railway initiatives in Northeast have multiplied 5 occasions. The federal government has accelerated efforts to combine all state capitals within the area into the nationwide railway grid by 2029.
Finally, the plan is to increase the railway community to the neighboring nations of Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. The success of this plan will even depend upon the home scenario in every of those nations. From Agartala, the railway route by way of Akhaura extends to Bangladesh, forming a part of the plan to hyperlink Kolkata and Agartala by way of Dhaka, as it is going to be a shorter route than passing by way of West Bengal and Assam. The continued 223 km Sairang–Hbicchhuah mission in Mizoram will prolong to the state’s southern border, opening a direct commerce path to Myanmar and Southeast Asia. Work on a 69-kilometer monitor connecting Assam and Gelephu in Bhutan is predicted to start quickly, which is able to supply the nation its first railway connectivity.