Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Lalu Yadav is going places.......

The re-branding of Railway Minister Lalu Yadav is gathering steam.

Today's Ahmedabad Times reports that in April, Lalu has speaking engagements in three top business schools in the US: Harvard, Stanford and Chicago. Students from Harvard and Wharton have already met him while on a tour of India. More b-school students are scheduled to do so. I suppose IIM-A can take credit for having started it all by inviting Lalu over.

The turnaround of the Indian Railways (IR) is a big story because many rail systems in the world are in trouble. As I wrote in an earlier post (Lalu Yadav is no liberaliser), Lalu has succeeded by eschewing the coventional reformist route. Today, in TOI, Lalu makes the point that he has made IR commercially successful without privatising or downsizing. Very true. But, I repeat, one must not get carried away and ascribe the turnaround to one man. It is IR's formidable technocratic strengths that have created the turnaround.

No comments: