Multiple challenges to Indian Railways' financial sustainability, growth

Despite record capex and growth, the national transporter faces financial sustainability challenges with a precarious operating ratio and slowing incremental freight traffic

Transport is often understood as the means to an end — the carrier of people and commercial activity — but not the activity itself. But as history and geopolitics routinely show us, from the rise of the Roman Empire to the creation of the United States and the coming together of independent India, to the complex political landscape of war in West Asia today, transport infrastructure is national and nationalising infrastructure, and the brass tacks and raw material of national and regional growth. 

This is especially true when it is a public sector enterprise like the Railways in India. This