Centres Of Excellence

To focus on new and emerging areas of research and education, Centres of Excellence have been established within the Institute. These ‘virtual' centres draw on resources from its stakeholders, and interact with them to enhance core competencies

Read More >>

Faculty

Faculty members at IIMB generate knowledge through cutting-edge research in all functional areas of management that would benefit public and private sector companies, and government and society in general.

Read More >>

IIMB Management Review

Journal of Indian Institute of Management Bangalore

IIM Bangalore offers Degree-Granting Programmes, a Diploma Programme, Certificate Programmes and Executive Education Programmes and specialised courses in areas such as entrepreneurship and public policy.

Read More >>

About IIMB

The Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) believes in building leaders through holistic, transformative and innovative education

Read More >>

Public-Private Partnership in Railways

Volume 20, Number 1 Article by Anil Kumar Gupta & Shyamal Roy March, 2008

Public-Private Partnership in Railways: A New Approach :

The existing literature on public private partnership (PPP) is largely project-centric and deals mainly with non-railway transport infrastructure. The railway is different from other modes of transport because of the strong interrelationship that exists between railway projects and the existing network/system in matters of operation, maintenance, etc and not much PPP literature exists in this area. The current approach to private participation in railways is a reform oriented policy approach that dwells on restructuring, privatising, licensing, unbundling and deregulating the existing set up. This could be termed as a top-down approach. In contrast, the evolution of private partnership in the Indian Railways (IR) is a bottom-up phenomenon – incremental, multidimensional and without any change in the existing set up. A different framework is required to capture this evolution.

This paper is based on research carried out on the Indian Railways, in which seven railway companies were studied. These companies either came into being as part of private partnerships or used varied forms of private partnerships. The views of thirty key people associated with such partnerships were collected through interviews. PPP in IR has evolved over the last two decades in response to a strong need for increasing investment, prioritising projects, allocating dedicated funds, and reducing losses in peripheral services. An alternative two-dimensional three level framework for PPP in the railways has been developed, which not only captures private partnership in IR but also facilitates the development of strategies and vision for the future. The framework may help in laying down future goals for encouraging PPP at three levels – project level, organisation level and sector level – and shows interlinkages among the three for achieving the goals. It also represents an alternative approach to railway privatisation with better social and political acceptance, which will encounter less resistance to change within the government organisation.

Reprint No 08101