No fare hike was announced in the Railway Budget for 2019.
Railways were first introduced to India in 1853.
Slow pace in modernisation and infrastructure addition chokes tracks, constrains productivity, raises costs and invites political interference.
Indian Railways (IR) seems to be caught in a time warp, kept there by successive ministers who have played to the gallery by announcing more and more new passenger trains without caring what this will do to the congestion in the network and the efficient carriage of revenue-earning freight traffic.
The Indian Railways has joined hands with China for cooperation in developing high-speed rail corridors in selected routes in the country.
The Railways' share of freight traffic has dropped to 33 per cent from 90 per cent in the 1950s.
'When I talk to my colleagues in the Railways, they say 'aadmi toh bohot hai, lekin matlab ka aadmi ek bhi nahi hai (the Railways has a bloated workforce, but doesn't have employees with have the skillsets that matter)'.'
As the national transporter is planning to come out with semi-high speed routes where trains can clock an average speed of 160-200 kmph, dedicated testing becomes essential.
There is a view that heavyweight portfolios like home, finance, defence and external affairs besides education and culture, two ministries with strong ideological hues, will be kept by the BJP, while its allies can get anywhere between five to eight cabinet berths.
Indian Railway's sustenance, freight traffic, - which accounts for about 70 per cent of its revenue - has been plateauing of late.
RailYatri offers a host of travel-related services to a 4.5 million user base. Shine Jacob finds out what's next for the app.
Indian Railways said it would rope in home-grown talent to develop world-class stations as foreign consultants were charging exorbitant fees.
Despite a party leader who doesn't seem to put much faith in him and barbs on his first-time ministership, Trivedi is determined to revamp the Indian Railways.
The railways also rolled out its first orange coloured Vande Bharat Express from Kasargod to Thiruvananthapuram, a high demand route which now operates two such trains, a senior Indian Railways official said.
The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on Wednesday approved seven multi-tracking projects of Indian Railways at an estimated cost of around Rs 32,500 crore, Union minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said. The proposed projects, which will be fully funded by the Centre, will help increase the existing line capacity, smoothen train operations, reduce congestion and facilitate ease of travelling and transportation. The projects covering 35 districts in nine states -- Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Odisha, Jharkhand and West Bengal -- will increase the existing network of Indian Railways by 2,339 km and provide employment of an estimated 7.06 crore man-days to the people of the states.
Indian Railways has managed to improve its freight volumes each year since the pandemic. However, its inability to add new industries and goods will pose a challenge for the national transporter in the wake of it setting an ambitious target of 45 per cent share in the national logistics by 2030. According to officials, the ministry of railways achieved 114 million tonnes (mt) of miscellaneous goods (classified as balance and other goods) in 2023-24.
'The life of his political career is dependent on success in this constituency.'
'it's not just youth in India who are left behind because of their inability to find jobs; nearly two-thirds of Indian women of working ages do not participate at all in the paid labour force.'
Authorities of Indian Railways, which has witnessed a worrying spate of fire-related mishaps in the last few years, are yet to take any concrete steps to address the issue.
Stocks of smallcap and midcap companies, which had caught the fancy of retail investors, also feature in the portfolio of leading politicians in addition to bluechip stocks.
Dipa Karmakar will make her comeback to the tournament after a long gap of eight years
Indian Railways is one of the biggest and busiest rail networks in the world, operating 9,000 passenger trains and transporting up to 20 million passengers every day.
The Indian Railways has closed 2013-14 with a 15 per cent increase in revenue, rising to Rs 1,40,485 crore, compared to Rs 1,21,831 crore last year.
The Indian Railways needs the return of the influential and well-heeled customer for its revival, if not survival.
Revamping Indian Railways will need bold thinking, and lots of money and time. And all three may be scarce, points out T N Ninan.
With surplus funds projected to fall at an all-time low of Rs 1,300 crore (Rs 13 billion) in the current financial year and the operating ratio, a key efficiency indicator, at an all-time high of 92 per cent, the railways requires a massive makeover in asset utilisation and to open itself to the private sector, said R Sivadasan, former financial commissioner, Indian Railways.
LIC will be subscribing bonds worth Rs 30,000 crore.
Railways has earned Rs 1,14,656.13 crore during April-December 2014, registering an increase of 12.57 per cent. It had earned Rs 1,01,856.45 crore during the same period in the previous year.
In an interview with Business Standard, days before the announcement of the Railway Budget for 2011-12, Financial Commissioner Samar Jha hopes that the railways would tide over the crisis soon, as the impact of the Sixth Pay Commission recomendations dissipates and earnings improve. Edited excerpts:
An Indian-American sought an order from the Kerala high court in India demanding that Indian Railways stop the practice of discarding human waste in the open.
'Dense' to 'very dense' fog prevailed in parts of Punjab, Haryana, west Rajasthan, Bihar, Delhi, west Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Assam.
The Indian Railways have earned Rs 865,95.04 crore (Rs 8.65 billion) during April-October 2014 as compared to Rs 772,73.88 crore (Rs 7.72 billion) during the same period last year, registering an increase of 12.06 per cent.
The 81-year-old Tunda, a close aide of wanted terrorist Dawood Ibrahim, was accused of carrying out blasts in five trains in different cities in December 1993 to mark the first anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition.
The training involving 100 Indian officers will lay emphasis on onsite training covering operational and maintenance facilities, monitoring systems and traffic controls.
The training was expected to begin soon.
'You can never bring about a change if you only bring in outsiders. Consultants will never feel what changes are necessary and where,' says Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu.
Not just the Indian Railways, even the state transport companies too should be subjected to the same norm of paying a market-linked price for the diesel they use. If the state transport units take an annual hit of Rs 5,000 crore (Rs 50 billion) because of the higher diesel price, let the additional financial burden be borne by the different state governments which run those services. Why let the state-controlled oil marketing companies bear the burden all on their own?
Indian Railways plans Rs 39,000 crores non-fare revenue. Via: Branding of trains. Vinyl-wrapping of Rajdhanis, Shatabdis and Garib Raths. Moving billboards.
The Bill is likely to be introduced in the winter session of Parliament.
Notwithstanding the recent sharp decline in the stocks of public sector companies, analysts at Jefferies remain bullish on this segment. State Bank of India, Coal India, and NTPC are their top picks in this space, they said in a recent note. The public sector undertaking (PSU) or state-owned enterprise (SOE) index, with a 70-percentage-point outperformance versus the National Stock Exchange Nifty50 over the past 12 months, comes after a decade of underperformance before 2020.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances