Indian Railways is set to take competition head on. With its share in cargo transport falling, the Railways are planning to make freight charges flexible on some routes to attract greater volumes.

"We have identified the routes where rakes go empty because of high charges. The railways plan to notify the routes this week, where rates will be determined by market conditions," a ministry official said.

Chennai-Hyderabad, Delhi-Dhanbad, Mumbai-Jaipur and Delhi-Guwahati are some of the routes that may get notified. The official, however, cautioned that flexibility would be allowed only on the "specified direction".

At present, the same rates are applicable for to-and-fro journeys. On certain routes, like Delhi-Guwahati, there is enough traffic for one way but the rakes return empty.

Taking a cue from the rating practice followed by truckers, who charge higher rates for one way but reduce them by half for the journey back, the railways expect to attract more traffic with the new plan.

"All the procedural work has been done and we have identified 'empty flow directions' for all the four regions, where regional railway officials will be given freedom to set the rates, depending on the demand," the official said.

He said Railway Minister Lalu Prasad was in favour of the optimal utilisation of railway capacity and the proposed notification was an effort in that direction.

Illustrating the concept of the 'empty-flow-direction' that are to be notified, he said, "For instance, while working out the empty-flow-cycle for the south, we discovered a surplus of 20 foodgrain rakes, which travelled back empty till it reached central India."

This was a pure waste of capacity, which should not be allowed, he added.

The argument being put forth in favour of having a uniform rate both ways is that with the rakes returning empty, the turnaround time is lesser.

This brings about greater efficiency. The official, however, said that there was no rationale behind improving efficiency at the cost of capacity.