• 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 happened without any increase in fares or freight rates. It is based on a simple fact that expenses of the Railways are indifferent to its throughput (the number of passengers or the million tonnes of freight it carries): the same resources carrying more throughput, resulting in greater efficiency and sky-high profits. Volumes, not margins, are fuelling it. A monopoly behaving like an entrepreneur; a price-setter not raising prices.

• The turnaround has been led by — and my fingers don’t pause on the keyboard when I write the word — Lalu (See pages 4 and 5). Just as M. Damodaran took the credit of driving the turnaround in UTI and Arvind Pande for the turnaround in SAIL, it is Lalu who’s driving the turnaround engine at the Railways. But, like other managers, he too has a team, a large one at that — the 1.42 million strong army of board members, directors, managers, drivers, station masters, gangmen, keymen and other ‘invisibles’ (See page 7) — all of who have helped morph the spirit of the Railways. And who are simultaneously assets as well as liabilities.

... contd.