Shajil Anthru

More than ten Vande Bharat trains are flagged off with celebration and hailed as the best innovative Make by India product. But no one seems to remember a man who devoted his career and life to the making of this incomparable train at the cost in a small span of time. He is none other than Sudhanshu Mani, a multidisciplinary engineer.

He has Thirty-seven years in Indian Railways Service of Mechanical Engineers (IRSME), intensive experience in Projects, Railway operations, R&D & Technology and Rolling stock designs–including hands on, administrative & Managerial experience, capped by the assignment as the senior-most representative of Indian Railways outside India and later as the General Manager of the biggest railway coach-building factory in the world.

He has vast experience in Railway Operations and Commercial management, Workshop and Projects. In addition, he has independently handled many locomotive technology projects, both international and domestic. The most notable among all these is a series of technology developments carried out on EMD & ALCo family diesel locomotives of the Indian Railways, involving a high degree of personal input at technical and managerial levels for successful implementation, involving a series of interactions with such reputed players as M/s Siemens, GETS, Alstom, EMD, bombardier, ABB, Bosch, etc.; the latest being the leadership role design & development of a 5500 hp locomotive through a collaborative project between Indian Railways & EMD/USA.His  experience in the field of Rolling Stock engineering, technology and project management is unmatched on the Indian Railways.

His journey as a railway man began way back in 1976 when he joined Indian Railways (IR) as a trainee in a four-year engineering course at the Institute of Mechanical & Electrical Engineering, Jamalpur. He started my career as an officer in the eastern part of the country, in railway divisions and workshops. Later, he held many important assignments in India and abroad.

He signed off from my railway career with the turnout of Train 18, the first indigenous 180/160 km/h train set, designed and manufactured through in-house effort of Integral Coach Factory; this train which has caught the imagination of the country as it was the first time that a rolling stock project of this magnitude was done from concept to manufacture entirely in India.

Very few know that this “Train 18” designed and developed by Sudhanshu Mani and his team is the Vande Bharat Express, which is lauded as projected as a prestigious project of the nation.

But it was not a simple task to get approval from higher authorities to get sanction for starting this project. Sudhanshu Mani had to touch the Railway Board chairman’s feet to get approval.

As the then General Manager of Integrated Coach Factory, Mani spearheaded the development of Train 18, securing the necessary approvals and overseeing the project’s completion. Remarkably, Mani was able to achieve this feat at just one-third price of what it would cost to import a similar train set from abroad. Securing approval was the major hurdle faced by Sudhanshu Mani.

As per “Times Now”, during a recent interview with Dainik Bhaskar, Mani recalled the ordeal he had to face to get the necessary approvals to get the Vande Bharat Express project going.

“Ministry officials doubted our team’s claims to develop a world-class train at one-third cost; they thought our claim was just a publicity stunt,” Mani said.

“Exhausted, I approached the then Chairman of the Railway Board. I pitched Train 18 to him and even assured that the ICF team can manufacture a world-class train at one-third the cost of importing such a train from abroad”.

“The Chairman was about to retire in about 14 months. Therefore, we had to lie to get the work done. We said that this train would be ready before his retirement and he will be the one to inaugurate it. While we knew that it was not possible to complete this work in such a short time,” he added.

Despite all efforts, approval was not given.Not prepared to take no for an answer, Mani added, he caught hold of the official’s feet and said he would let go only if he was given permission for the project.

Vande Bharat Express is India’s first indigenously built semi-high-speed train. It is equipped with advanced features like automatic doors, GPS-based passenger information systems and onboard Wi-Fi. The train has a maximum speed of 160 kmph, making it one of the fastest trains in India.

On 26 January 2019, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal announced that the train would be named Vande Bharat Express, named after “Train 18”, which was created and manufactured at the Integral Coach Factory under the leadership of Sudhanshu Mani, as part of the “Make in India” initiative. Later, the first Vande Bharat train was flagged off on 15 February 2019 on the New Delhi-Kanpur-Allahabad-Varanasi route.

Presently, Vande Bharat Expresss run between New Delhi – Sri Mata Vaishno Devi Katra (J&K), Gandhinagar – Mumbai, New Delhi – Amb Andora in Himachal Pradesh, Chennai – Mysore, Nagpur – Bilaspur, Howrah – New Jalpaiguri Vande Mataram trains operate on Secunderabad-Visakhapatnam, Mumbai-Solapur and Mumbai-Shirdi routes.

Now that the flag off and introduction of Vande Mataram Express to Kerala is rising to controversial levels in the way it is announced, Sudhanshu Mani’s experience is worth remembering. We must be indebted to him and his team. The saddest part   is that even though he has received numerous recognitions, the government is still blind to recognize his achievement, which makes India proud.