Transport: modernizing Indian rail
Audio 02:32
A train set in India.
© screenshot / ffo.gov.in
By: Marina Mielczarek
3 min
She is a 167 year old lady, known to all the inhabitants of India.
She is the Indian Railways and its vastness, that is to say 13,000 public railway lines in a country as large as seven times the size of France.
But now, too old, too dangerous, it was high time to modernize the Indian rail.
This is what the Indian government decided to hand over to the private sector.
A choice already contested which will take place in stages.
Advertising
“
You will see, on the new lines with modernized trains, passengers and freight will travel faster on safer routes and on time!
"
These are, in broad outline, the promises heard at the press conference of the new Indian Minister of Transport.
India, 60,000 km of railroads
New minister because the old one, considered too slow to start this very first concession to the private sector, was asked to leave.
But with the official launch of these first rail concessions (151 lines) to the private sector, would the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi not capitulate to the task?
Improving public transport and political courage
CQFD: What He Had to Demonstrate!
To believe the expression of Jean-Joseph Boileau, expert on India at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations in Paris.
“
Yes, I am really very reluctant about these concessions from Indian Raiways rail transport.
By liberalizing the market, he
explains,
with this concession from Indian Railways, the Prime Minister gives up investing for fear of spending.
We are faced with a political gesture.
Prime Minister Modi wants to improve his image with his friends, the big bosses.
What's going to happen ?
It is the barons of Indian conglomerates who will win the markets.
However, their record is not brilliant!
I have seen it particularly in the coal-fired power plant sector;
most of them have closed today, it is a failure.
All economic studies have shown that maintaining public transport is efficient.
There, the approach will fragment the market and that will not lower the prices of tickets for Indian passengers.
"
The right choice at the right time
"
I am used to Indian trains,
" explains Laurent Goulvestre, adviser on international markets
.
The country is gigantic - don't forget that it is 7 times the size of France - its rail network is gigantic.
Indian Railways is the country's largest employer with 1.3 million workers, for 23 million passengers every day!
These lines need to be modernized.
And I think that Prime Minister Modi, with this choice, has opted for the only way to avoid the slowness of the public administrative red tape of Indian democracy.
"
This rail liberalization is part of a larger program of national transport concessions.
Air India, the national company just sold to the Indian industrial giant Tata.
Air India in the hands of industrial giant Tata
So good or bad choice?
According to Gilles Boquérat, specialist in India at the Foundation for Strategic Research, “this
concession is also a way of competing with transport between them!
Trains in India are slow.
There are 13,000 trains every day and the fastest between Delhi and Accra does not exceed 110 km / h.
The demand of the middle and richer class is significant.
As a result, the train market faces competition from the aviation and road sector.
For the plane, in 2020, Air India heavily indebted was no longer solvent, its private competitor Indigo occupies nearly 50% of the Indian aviation market.
"
Twelve first lines will be modernized by the end of 2023. For the rest of the 139 others, it will be necessary to wait until 2027.
►
last publication October 2021:
Utopies made in the world
(Editions Odile Jacob) Jean-Joseph Boilot (Researcher at the Institute for Strategic International Relations in Paris)
Newsletter
Receive all international news directly in your mailbox
I subscribe
Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application
google-play-badge_FR
India
Narendra Damodardas Modi
Transport