The government’s capex over the last 10 years has been concentrated in two areas besides defence. These are roads and railways. The focus on railways has largely been on introducing faster sophisticated trains, adding new lines, developing metro systems, etc., which has added quality to the services. As the government would continue to spend on railways, this would be an opportune time to also bring in reforms to align with services in other model countries.

Two areas come to mind here. The first is to reform the overall systems in certain aspects of its functioning, which will enhance security and quality. The second is privatisation of railway stations to enable the railways to earn a return from the same. This will fall in the category of leveraging assets to create new revenue streams.

Given the series of learnings from various incidents in the last year or so, attention can be paid to the security issue. First, the train compartments in suburban trains need to have automatic closing doors. This will reduce the chances of commuters getting injured while travelling on trains. This is necessary to make travel more humane for millions of people.

Second, the concept of general compartments in long distance trains needs to be done away with. It has been observed that this service is generally used by the relatively less literate people in lower income groups. The compartments are overloaded with........

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