Needed: A rolling stock policy

In addition to plans for electrification, there should be a plan for disposing off diesel locomotives, over and above the path of least resistance, that of sending them to the scrap yard

Indian Railways (IR) has just over 11,100 locomotives. (This figure is about a year old.) 39 are steam, 5,869 are diesel and 5,214 are electric. Naturally, not all are broad gauge. About 13 of steam can be deducted as narrow gauge, just over 100 of diesel are also narrow gauge. Steam no longer matters. Nor does narrow (or metre) gauge. Therefore, sticking to broad gauge, let’s say 5,800 diesel locomotives and 5,200 electric locomotives, an aggregate of 11,000. Roughly 53 per cent of this rolling stock is diesel. These are locomotives proper. They aren’t mobile units of either diesel or