Lalu in limelight-For the 'right reasons' for a change

You can call of his 15 years in Bihar a jungle Raj, his methods of Governance a corporate tragedy, can be labelled as the most ridiculed Indian Politician aboard and as the victim of countless Lalu jokes . But the man has made a remarkable transformation of Indian Railways in the last 2 years since he took over so much so that he gave a lecture recently at IIM (A) on how he managed the turnaround. Some of the figures are staggering

a) Indian Railways, one of the largest networks in the world was reeling under losses till 2001 and was close to bankruptcy
b) Track record of on time departures and arrivals was pathetic and was abused by public from all forms of life and the accident rates were high
c) Every railway budget till 2003 saw an increase in second class and AC fares and the common man was finding it extremely difficult to bridge the gap

However in the last 2 years things have turned around as Railways are back in black and they even have a cash surplus

Cargo volumes have gone up by 3 times and that line of business is quiet profitable

For a change in some sectors fares have come down and the numbers of routes have increased by almost 30 % in the lat 2 years with majority of broad gauge projects completed on or ahead of time.

We have now a three tier AC train called 'Gharib Rath' which is 30 % cheaper than the convention AC fares which has been achieved by increasing space up to 85 berths from 64 by changing the design of the compartments

On time arrival rates have substantially gone up and the motivation of railway employees seems to be an all time high and the actual number of accidents has also come down as a %

He is not educated from any of the top Management universities of the world, may be not even passed the secondary education levels and neither does he possess any of the basic qualities of excellence preached by the management schools for strategy , leadership or innovation. However he has delivered the results for an organization which is one of the most complex public utility services in the world and nobody even in their wildest dreams would have expected him to do so give his past track record. Hats of to Lalu and this for a change is a pleasant surprise unlike the Lalu we are used to!

Let's give the Devil its due as they say
RK