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Tamizhvanan R

Reg No : 1421330
1 MBA L

Privatizing the Indian Railways
Indian Railways (IR) is an Indian state-owned enterprise and operated by the India
through the Ministry of Railways. In 20132014 Indian Railways had revenues of Rs.
101665.95 crore . Indian Railways is the world's ninth largest commercial or utility employer, by
number of employees, with over 1.4 million employees and carries over 8,900 million passengers
annually. This essay depicts the Pros and cons of privatizing Indian railways.
IR currently suffers from dearth of resources. Sadly, the infrastructure and manufacturing
capacity available to IR is never enough to meet the increasing demand of locomotives nor does
India stand a chance to meet the international safety standards, efficiencies of the railway
services. The key reason demanding privatization in service are delays , hygiene ,sanitation ,
outdated technology (IRCTC Managed by center for Railway information system) and
inefficient utilization of resource and man power .In the fast moving world people expect
modernization which demands modern facilities and comfort during journey. Private
Organization mainly focus on customer satisfaction and they are ready to implement new
strategies with huge investments and satisfy the customer needs and maintain higher standards.
On the other hand Private organization mainly focus on their Return of Investment ,so
privatization would just create a private monopoly which might seek to set higher prices which
exploit consumers . Indian Railways is the sixth largest organization with huge man power and
provides cheapest means of transportation to millions of people across the country and
privatization will impact ticket fares. The central Government allocates funds to Indian Railways
with the intention to serve the people which would be threatened when privatized .When
Privatized a better service and satisfaction can be expected but the question is how many of them
would be able to afford it?
Though its acceptable that Indian Railways needs a better standards, Privatization is not
the way to achieve it. IR can try to raise funds in all possible means and use it to improve their
efficiency and standards. And people with better economical standards expecting drastic changes
in railway system must accept the fact that there are people with low income in the same country
and improvement and modernization should be carried out in such a way that it is acceptable and
adopted by people at all levels and it would happen gradually. Thus IR needs modernization and
not Privatization.

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