Dependency story: Why Indian railway is overloaded? - 04/24

India's rail network, stretching 125,000 km is almost same in comparison national highway network of 145,000 km. However, quality of national highway leading to slow travel is the reason that railways' are overburdened. For long distance travel, a common person cannot think of anything other than railway.

However, a paradigm shift is underway with the completion of the Mumbai-Delhi Expressway. Planned expansion of the expressway network promises a future where comfortable sleeper coach buses can offer travel times and prices comparable to trains. Interestingly, the cost factor wasn't the primary hurdle (railway construction costing around Rs 15 crore per km compared to Rs 14 crore for expressways). 

The real challenge lay in recognizing this common man's pain point was myopic views from politician and public demand to improve railway (since common person didn't know there is an alternative to railway other than airway).

This narrative resonates with situations in many corporations. Often, essential but repetitive tasks are handled by junior team members (think data entry, Excel-based fuzzy matching, etc.). The focus from leadership remains on optimizing these existing processes. However, a more productive approach from a long run perspective would be to explore and implement superior alternatives – for instance, licensing of automated Master Data Management tools along with manual processes.

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