Sir — This refers to the editorial, “Not a private railway” (December 27). It is encouraging that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has vowed to get Indian Railways back on track. But he needs to take a few things into account. To improve the railways’ financial health, he has to first increase the passenger fare and freight charges, and simultaneously modernise railways with the help of private companies.
It is good that we are aiming to have a few bullet trains running in our country, but we need to focus more on improving our present infrastructure. We must remember that bullet trains will be expensive, and passengers might not want to shell out more to make the project viable.
Indian Railways has huge tracts of land, which can be leased out to private companies. This will fetch the railways large sums of money. Now that Mr Modi has an efficient Minister for Railways in Mr Suresh Prabhu, he should not have problems in executing his plans for the world’s largest railways.