Page 670 - ES 2020-21_Volume-1-2 [28-01-21]

Industry and Infrastructure 297

Ministry of Agriculture, state governments, and local bodies – to rollout the Kisan Rail services.
The Railways has so far operated Kisan Rail services on thirteen routes. Till 8 January 2021,
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a total of 120 trips of Kisan Rail have been operated, transporting more than 34,000 tonnes of
consignments.

8.56 During the lock-down on account of COVID-19 pandemic, the operations of all passenger-
carrying trains was stopped, which shut-down the movement of essential commodities that had
been moving by parcel services. To ensure that the supply of essential commodities throughout
the country is not disrupted, Indian Railways introduced parcel special train services, including
time-tabled parcel special trains. The first time-tabled parcel special train was run by the Indian
Railways on 31 March 2020.
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8.57 These time-tabled parcel special train services were continued even when passenger-
carrying train services got restored. Till 25 December 2020, the Indian Railways have operated
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7,267 parcel special trains, out of which 7,014 had been time-tabled services. Approximately 6.6
lakh tonnes of consignments was transported through these services.

8.58 To develop capacity- both infrastructure and rolling stock- ahead of demand, the Ministry
of Railways has developed a National Rail Plan (NRP). It aims at developing adequate rail
infrastructure by 2030 to cater to the projected traffic requirements up to 2050. NRP has
attempted to map the entire transport infrastructure of the country on a common platform. It
has also assessed the existing passenger and freight traffic carried on all modes and forecast
the growth for the period 2030 to 2050 and then strategize a significant modal shift to rail. The
objective is to increase the modal share of rail in freight from the current level of 27 per cent
to 45 per cent. Innovative financing has been devised to fund these priority projects. Indian
Railway Finance Corporation (IRFC) is mobilizing resources with sufficient moratorium period
and projects are being targeted to be completed well before the expiry of the moratorium period.
These priority projects are being planned in such a way that they will provide enough return to
service the debt.

Telecom Sector

8.59 The telecom sector plays an important role in implementation of JAM-trinity (Jandhan
Aadhar Mobile) based social sector schemes and other pro-development initiative of the GoI.
The sector has been recognized all over the world as a powerful tool for development and poverty
reduction. The GoI has laid considerable emphasis on broadband for all as a part of its Digital
India Campaign. Efforts are being made to address the digital divide by extending inclusive
internet access to every Indian citizen. The details on users and its break-up are summarised in
the Figure 36. The wireless telephony constitutes 98.3 per cent of all subscriptions whereas the
share of landline telephones now stands at only 1.7 per cent. The overall teledensity in India
stands at 86.6 per cent at the end of November-2020, whereas teledensity in rural and urban
areas are 59.1 per cent and 139.0 per cent respectively.

8.60 Internet and broadband penetrated both in urban and rural area at a rapid pace. The number
of internet subscribers (both broadband and narrowband put together) stood at 776.45 million
at the end of September-2020 as compared to 636.73 million in March-2019. The wireless data
usage grew at exponential rate during the calender year 2019 and was at 76.47 Exa bytes. During