After the success of the golden quadrilateral road transport system, it is now the turn of the railways – the golden rail corridor. The Indian Railways has planned to develop a supe fast track between Mumbai and Delhi with trains going at speeds of 160 to 200 kmph to reduce the time of travel to just seven hours down from the existing sixteen hours taken by the Rajdhani Express.
The railways plan to achieve this on the existing tracks after making minor changes in the loop design but with new trains. They claim that the cost of this will not be very high as there is no land acquisition involved.
All this is good news and very believable. The Indian Railways claims are believable as they have achieved feats which in Indian work conditions appeared impossible.
A decade ago, it was accepted fact that the Indian Railways (like present day Indian Airlines) always runs in losses, and in every budget, efforts were made to minimize these by escalating the passenger fare rates. It was beyond our imagination that one day the railways could run in profit.
Yet, in a decade of inflation in every sphere of life, the railways have shown profits. These were achieved through simple management changes which proved radical. Similarly, the development of the Konkan Railway within a time schedule suddenly brought a new face to government working, and with it changed the way people looked at government work.
Recent changes in the railways has been the improvement in booking of tickets on the internet and near complete eradication of the middle man in ticket booking. There has been remarkable change in the quality of catering and house keeping that has made traveling by train more comfortable hence preferred.
Thus, once the railways claims it will get the golden rail corridor, it is to be believed and once this corridor is set in motion, we can expect more changes in the railway system in the rest of the country.
We can only hope that this is one public infrastructure in the country that can make us proud of. Also hopefully, this can be achieved if, and only if, our politicians don’t poke their dirty noses into the affairs of the railways.
Till then, we can only keep our fingers crossed, and hope for the best.
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