Can you guess the budget of Indian Railways for the coming 5 years…? It’s a whooping 142 billion dollars…! The Indian Railway is all set to get into a new phase. In the last year, 110 reform measures were initiated by the Railways which permit 100 percent private sector investment. In a short period of time, we could well be checking out pnr status mobile for the new trains. Check out more about this here under:
- The various targeted segments in this context are metro rails, suburban rails, manufacturing and maintenance and manufacturing, locomotives and rolling stock, electric and signaling works and dedicated freight lines.
- The designated authorities are trying to explore ways to raise the funds by working closely with the reputed financial institutions like World Bank and IFC. The railway minister stated that the e-commerce can help the railways to modernize, expand, introduce transparency, introduce clean energy resources, improve efficiency and meet expectations of the customers.
- The Indian railways in collaboration with the US EXIM bank is working to design the specific financing model to take complete advantage of the huge investments and business opportunities in this sector. Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) is a reputed organization involved in this aspect.
- Aiming to provide transparency in fare and freight pricing, the Indian railways has set to design a draft framework for the same. To make these huge investments a reality, the public and private sector partnerships are encouraged equally.
- A few projects which are on a run in Indian railways are: high speed trains across various cities, freight corridor, doubling and tripling train trips to facilitate heavy traffic, introducing modernized facilities in about 40 major railway stations, upgrading the existing signal system and instrumentation and a few other safety measures.
- In the last year November month, 7 billion contracts were awarded to GE and Alstom. A key role is played by Japan in this context to improve the Indian railway system. We can witness huge investments flowing from this country. Moreover, Japan is extending its financial and technical help in building India’s first bullet train. The Indian railway is all set to capitalize these investments.
- Our railway is also associated with France to improve its services. A major project undertaken in collaboration with France is to study the viability of upgrading Delhi to Chandigarh line which is a 245 km long track. About 400 major railways are set to be modernized under SNCF. The development of pilot projects in Ludhiana and Ambala are taken up by the French National railway.
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A major initiative which is worth mentioning in this context is implementing the renewable energy resources to power up the railways. Solar and wind energy are prominently considered in this aspect. Use of this clean energy is a welcome phenomenon to promote our struggles to reduce pollution levels. Apart from being eco friendly, this can also be economical to the Indian railways.
These initiatives taken up the Indian railways are truly fascinating. In this massive scale, we can expect our railways to modernize at a faster rate.