(LiveMint)
The Indian Railways ecosystem can create a million jobs within the next 12 months, said railway minister Piyush Goyal at the opening session of the India Economic Summit. As part of this exercise, the national carrier plans to create a sort of a franchisee model wherein local entrepreneurs, by using a smart device, can book tickets at 2,000 railway stations across its network which don’t have a booking office. “This is in the works and will happen very soon,” Goyal.
The national carrier has a track length of around 115,000km, making it the world’s largest railway network under a single management. It runs around 20,849 trains daily and transports 23 million passengers. Goyal said various initiatives such as dedicated freight corridors, track renewal, station redevelopment, passenger holding areas and amenities such as parking have the potential to create these jobs without them being on the books of the country’s largest employer.
Goyal’s comments came a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the first time directly addressed the criticism that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) has mismanaged the Indian economy—especially after the first quarter showed that economic growth slowed sharply to 5.7%.
