Japanese
PM was visiting India to lay the foundation stone for India’s first High Speed
Rail (HSR) or Bullet train project. Does a country that can’t even maintain its
150 year old railway infrastructure, need an ultra-luxury, super-fast train?
I
was struggling to find a justification for this project and then I read about a
comment made by Chairman of Railway board in 1969 – “India does not need a Rajdhani
Express. In a poor country such air conditioned trains are luxuries,
best avoided”. Have Time brought us back to the same crossroads where a nation
has to decide on a path breaking project to lead the way for the following decades?
Thankfully the Chairman was overruled, and today we have Rajdhanis, Shatabdis, Durontos,
Gatimaans and many other AC express trains.
That
was not an isolated incident, Delhi Metro project was criticised for being very
expensive and elitist. But today ridership of Delhi Metro is at a record level
and it is world’s fourth largest network. It will jump to second, after completion
of Phase IV. Advent of Metro has expanded the reach of Delhi by creating jobs
and development of the whole NCR (National Capital Region). Even the Maruti
Suzuki project and the Bombay-Pune Express highway was seen as an elitist
project during the inception. But today both those projects are seen as a
turning point in their respective sectors.
Expectation
from Bullet Train project is to see an entire ecosystem come up around
manufacturing of bullet trains, creation of value-chain, with thousands of
suppliers. Most significantly we will be able to climb the value chain for
infrastructure projects and in future might export the same knowledge to other
developing countries.
Just
as an Aam Admi is riding on a Delhi
Metro for a daily commute and travels cross country on one of the AC trains, in
a few decades, we hope they will be riding one of many high speed trains crisscrossing
the nation.
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