India aims to invest $137 billion in railways in next 5 years

[sancho]

Any idea why markets reacted negatively , what were they expecting ?

From what I heared now, it's because the freight fares were hiked, which is the 2nd time since the new government is in power. Higher transport costs obviously is not good for the industry and the economy. What's also interesting is, that the passenger and freight numbers are falling since the new government has taken over, not sure if that has to do with the hikes last year, but it surely will reduce the expected profit.

Give him 5 years u lol see th difference

Sorry but that's totally unrealistic! A Government that was elected with this margin, with the mandate to actually change things, does not have the luxury to wait till the end of the term. You have to see at least some progress within the first year, to keep the hope up and there is already a pretty large disappointment on several areas. Take defence as an example, which started with a huge disappointment and the poor first budget. Then the mess with not having a proper DM for months, then the delays in modernisations for economic reasons and at the end of the year hardy any procurements at all. If the new budget at the weekend doesn't show a credible change, the Government will loose the bonus it got and the same can be seen everywhere. The Indian and foreign industries are expecting bold reforms to push the economy, because there were very little action so far. And even the railway side had many promises about bullet trains and more effectiveness...
Nobody expects that to be done already, but neither can you do a mid or long term projection now, there needs to be some clear actions now, to base the hope and sentiment on for this year and the coming once.

 

[SQ8]

Having a Bullet Train for the Howrah Express for e.g. may change the monopoly Indian Airlines enjoy on high end fast travel.

 

[The_Sidewinder]

heard lot of good stuff about this budget. Looks visionaire & realistic. I hope RM will not loose focus. Best of luck sir.

 

[magudi]

Can somebody tell me from experience, if there are actual changes in operations of the railway since the new government took over and hiked the prices and did they have done what they promised on, clean trains, more saftey...
Also what is the outcome of outsourcing parts of the stations to privat investors? With this huge investiments they now plan, it seems that it didn't worked out as the Government hoped and they didn't got the investments they hoped for.

I travel in and out of mumbai on a weekly basis one thing i can vouch for from my experience is that for the past few months innards of the coaches especially the toilets appear to be a lot better/cleaner than it used to be, but the station and it's premises are still as it used to be no significant changes
Then there's irctc website, though it might not seem like something significant but for thousands of regular users like me seeing it working properly after so many years is a boon. What irks me though is that the previous regimes were so inept that they were unable to fix or neglected something as small as this which affects a lot of people on a daily basis.
I don't know if feasibility study undertaken by the gov on bullet trains is complete yet or not but as the current budget doesn't mention it instead proposes improved coach design and increasing speeds i suspect it'll be long before we'll be able to see bullet trains making debut.