Indian Railways has launched itself on the road to privatisation by flagging off the Tejas Express running between Lucknow and Delhi and announcing plans to privatize the running of as many as 150 passenger trains.
This is an ambitious target, and global experience in privatising railways services has been mixed.
On the rational mark, it is difficult to privatise a portion of the Railways’ operations (total privatisation is not even being contemplated) as it is strongly vertically integrated. Logically, tracks and signalling, common resources accessed by all private train operators, should remain in state hands. But this can also be privatised much later, if at all.
