IT appears the stage is being set for another wonder. Pakistan Railways has recently issued an advertisement flaunting a new rail link from Islamabad to Murree and Muzaffarabad. The Railways “intends to hire national/international consultants or consortium consultants” to undertake a “feasibility study for laying” this link. The project is at a nascent stage but at first glance it does suggest that some sort of a turnaround in the Railways is in the process — until, of course, the gaze is lowered from the high spectacle in the making. We are then confronted by the same sluggish routine that has held trains in the country hostage for so many years now. Maybe the government will dispute the impression. Maybe a few schedules being followed and a few engines and wagons up and running again will be presented as proof of recent improvements. This may be true to some extent, but to think that PR has actually moved on from fixing the old, sprawling system to a point where it is about to implement ambitious projects requires much more than imagination and grand desires. It requires stability and mobility which the department doesn’t have. True, at the moment the focus is only on whether or not such a project is feasible, but that too is indicative of the government’s priorities.

The PML-N government almost specialises in finding new ways of coming up against a wall. Back in the mid-1990s, when the then PML-N government decided to have a motorway between Lahore and Islamabad, voices were raised and questions asked as to why the allocated funds could not be used to set the railways right countrywide. No doubt, it is a much-used route, but it is defined — as our some other landmarks on a smaller scale — by the principle of creating a grand model on top of grim realities which do not go away. The government may find the latest rail link feasible, and chances are it will be hailed by many, like the motorway of the dual-carriage road from Islamabad to Murree, as a ‘gift’ to the people from the Nawaz Sharif government. Sadly, that will not change one fact: a more basic effort to revive the Pakistan Railways remains on hold.