The turnaround of the Railways is real, touchable and backed by record-breaking figures. It has been a journey in which the first station was freight earnings which is what we have largely captured in this edition of Express Survey. The next stop will focus on turning passenger losses into earnings and make a rail journey a pleasant experience. The last station of this turnaround trip is approaching fastallowing private players to run container traffic and the Rs 65,000 crore freight corridor that will come up over the next six or seven years. It is then that this turnaround will climax.

The turnaround is deeper than petty restructuring. This is not merely a strategic jump in productivity of all resources of the Railways men, locomotives, wagons, coaches, tracks, systems, finance but a thought-through business plan that takes new realities of transport management, like competition from roads and air or changing consumer preferences, into account.

The turnaround has happene ...more