Indian Railway Finances - A Critical Review of Basic Issues and Emerging Options

Railway finances are closely linked to the role that has been traditionally assigned to the railway system in the development of the Indian Economy. But given a mandate of performance on commercial lines in a liberalised economic policy framework, the railways have been required to depend mainly on internal resource generation for funding maintenance and expansion of the network. However, an alternative approach, which could have served as a basis to operationalise strategies to launch the railways onto such a process, has not been put in place. This paper examines an understanding of the problems and constraints which the railways encounter in their efforts to fit into the new economic policy framework.