IMPRESSIONS
OF VADODARA’S RAILWAY STAFF COLLEGE
S.
M. Kumar
Visitors to any place
look for its landmarks. They are impressed if it is neat and clean,
abounding in architecturesque buildings, monuments and gardens.
Vadodara in Gujarat impresses a first-time visitor with its broad
roads, high-rise residential complexes, greenery, old palaces
and gardens. But its fame largely rests on being the seat of the
Railway Staff College. It is the alma mater of all those who opt
for a career at the executive level in various cadres of the Indian
Railways. After selection by the Union Public Service Commission
they all begin their careers with a rigorous foundation training
at the Railway Staff College, Vadodara. Whether engineers of different
disciplines or officials to deal with commerce, traffic and accounts
assigned to the different zonal railways are all trained there
before they embark on their challenging careers spanning over
three decades. In-service refresher courses are also a must for
all upto the level of General Managers, the highest functionaries
of the zonal railways.
Stepping in the
College premises located in Pratap Vilas Palace of the former
Gaekwad ruler of Baroda, one is greeted by our national bird,
the peacock, whose ubiquitous calls echo from all corners of the
55-acre campus. There are gardens and wooded land everywhere.
Several other varieties of birds also keep chirping in chorus.
The surroundings are impeccably beautiful.
Training is essential
at all levels to run the railway system. It needs devotion, courage
and leadership qualities of a high order. The College faculty
has been doing its best to inculcate these values among the trainees
since its relocation in Vadodara on January 31, 1952. Earlier
it functioned in Dehradun after its inception in 1930.
The Railway Staff
College has the status of a deemed university. Right from the
Director-General, who has the status of the General Manager of
any zonal railway in the country, and his team of 29 highly dedicated
Faculty Members are drawn on a tenure basis from among the outstanding
railway executives specially trained as trainers in India and
abroad. Resource persons with specialised expertise are also co-opted
from the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), Indian Institute
of Public Administration, universities, industries and business.
Recognised as
one of the premier training institutes by the Central Government,
the Railway Staff College offers customised training courses in
the fields of Executive Development, Strategic Management, Human
Resource Management, Transportation Management, Information Technology
and Rail Transport Logistics.
The College initiates
executives from India and aboard into the dynamics of a mass transportation
system like the railways. They are groomed to shoulder responsibilities
of increasing magnitude in an ever-changing scenario. Over two
thousand executives are trained every year.
The College aims
at producing world class railway executives. It is an institute
of excellence in the field of executive education and remains
an organisation of learning in perpetuity. Its other important
objectives are to provide consultancy and advisory services in
business management, promote and conduct research in the field
of transportation and train the executive trainers. It promotes
the intrinsic values of adaptive learning, talent nurturing and
inculcates among the trainees the urge to learn and teach.
The range of
courses at the Railway Staff College is immense. First, there
are the Foundation and Induction Courses for the civil servants
who qualify in the Union Civil Services examination and the Indian
Engineering Services. Then there are refresher courses for railway
executives who are also exposed to management development and
advanced management development courses later in their careers.
The function-related courses are customised for the executives
called upon to perform specialised jobs like planning, marketing,
human resources management, project appraisals, training, safety,
project financing, gender sensitisation and multi-modal transport.
There is a separate training course for the railway doctors at
the induction level. Afterwards, they too have to come for refreshers
and to learn the skills of hospital management.
The College endeavours
to draw the best in everyone who goes there. After all it is these
trainees who run the Indian Railways, the nation’s largest undertaking
with an investment of over 700 billion rupees. The 15 lakh employees
and officers, running over 14,000 trains everyday across a network
of nearly 7000 stations spread over 63,000 route kilometerage
indeed face a challenge at every moment in their life. But for
their collective efforts at every level a unique system like the
Indian Railways would not run the way it does. They are always
inspired by what Mahatma Gandhi said: " That service is the
noblest which is rendered for its own sake". (PIB Features)
