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Friday, May 05, 2006

THE CEO OF INDIAN RAILWAYS

Not long ago, the best and the brightest of the India's business thinkers had written off Indian railways as the Government's biggest "liabilities" (Now that I know, what "liability" means in Accountancy, I must use this word with further caution).There were suggestions that railways be privatised and corporatised. But then came a man to lead the railways and the rest is History. Yup, I am talking about Laloo Prasad Yadav. A few days back this name was synonymous with Bihar and its plight.Today, it is synonymous with Indian Railways.

The transformation journey of Indian Railways has turned out to be amongst the most striking business revolutions in the country. How did Laloo manage to handle this revolution? What did he do that transformed the Railways?.... and that too without any hikes in fares (in fact, there has been a reduction of fares). These are amongst the few questions which the b-school dons are trying to understand. And not surprisingly, IIMA is likely to introduce the "transformation" of Indian Railways as a "case study".
And the "CEO of Indian railways" is there to help out the B-school dons. In his simple language, "capacity utilisation" has done the magic. I am sure, the policies of Laloo will be the central idea behind numerous business research and journals.

Not only Indian universities, but also top universities abroad are amazed by the aura of this man, whose rustic charisma is beyond the grasp of many. The Harvard university school of social science and London School of Economics are amongst the universities, for whom this man is a topic of intense research.

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