Wake Up Call

March 24, 2002 on 10:00 pm | In Newspapers, Times of India | No Comments

Every Indian seems to have one impossibly romantic railway memory, and mine is of a journey from Kalka to Simla as a five year old when I feasted for the first time on the snow tipped crests of the Himalayas, and I later recounted it in “A Fine Family”. But these memories are rapidly dying, as are the railways. Today, the Indian Railways are in financial crisis, and if something drastic is not done, they will wither away like the state in Bihar. Continue reading…

Train to Nowhere

March 10, 2002 on 9:59 pm | In Newspapers, Times of India | No Comments

Like many Indians I was stupefied to read that the railways plan to bottle water. In that case, I thought, why don’t they also grow tea (and wheat and rice) for their catering department? And cotton for their conductor’s uniforms, and make shoes for the drivers while they are at it? Perhaps then we can get someone to run the trains safely. The issue is not bottled water but the astounding mindset of the railway board that is ignorant of the basic managerial concept of “core competence” and thinks that the railways with its inefficient, high cost labour can do it cheaper. Continue reading…

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