Post on Medial

Many say bullet trains in India won’t ever be profitable 🙏🙏 They said the same thing about China’s massive high-speed rail network, which has rapidly grown to become the largest in the world. They used to say, it’s "way too ambitious and costly". It was declared the Communist Party’s streak of building white elephants. .. Come 2024: It has turned profitable. In the first 6 months of 2024: Net profit of 1.7 billion yuan. And its debt ratio got down to 64.6%, a 10-year low. .. I have to say, this is a very significant achievement by China because the doubters had a point: It could very well have proven to be an immensely costly financial disaster. All the more impressive when you think it's a relatively new investment: China only opened its first high-speed rail line in 2008. They built it all up - the entire 45,000km of it - and turned it profitable in just 16 years. It's also a great proof of concept for many countries that don't have such infrastructure (looking at our own, India). .. Very large domestic high-speed train networks can be made to work 🙏🙏 This is good news because of course traveling by train is infinitely better for the environment than virtually all other long-distance transportation methods. And that’s why we need an aggressive decadal plan to build a golden quadrilateral-like network of bullet trains as a national collective. With due respect to dissent, on this subject, special interest groups need to be ignored, and a massive resolve must be made. .. When PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee launched the Golden Quadrilateral project, Lalu Prasad of RJD fiercely attacked the BJP-led NDA Govt. He had alleged, that the Govt was pushing this project to award contracts to builders and business communities which used to be a strong vote bank for the the BJP. His grouse? Hardly a few drove cars in India, so why build highways? .. I’m glad India didn’t listen to Lalu then 🙏🙏 And I really hope the India of today won’t pay heed to today’s Lalus either. Some obviously would. But I hope most won’t.