A WHIRL OF activity fills the dimly lit carriage. Passengers jostle and rip open paper bags containing linen for their bunks. It is a relief to leave the stench of Bangalore station, where tracks double as latrines. The Hospet overnight service departs a few minutes late, trundles along for 400km (250 miles) and arrives on time at dawn.
Like all Indian trains, it is crammed. Its cabins are worn and a bit grubby, the toilets holes in the floor. It is also cheap. A nine-hour trip on the best, air-conditioned berths costs 3,200 rupees ($50) for a family of four. Ticket prices were frozen by populist politicians who long ran the network, and only recently started to rise modestly.
The railways are a huge business: each day 19,000 trains carry 23m people and 3m tonnes of freight. But the state-owned monopoly is badly run. A former cabinet minister points to overstaffing, factionalism and bureaucracy.
A comparison with China is instructive. In 1990 that country had less track than India, but since then China’s rail network has grown by well over half, to 112,000km, whereas India’s...
from The Economist: Special report http://ift.tt/1PYQCE0
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