Co-develop technologies with India, Prabhu tells foreign firms -Governance Now

Co-develop technologies with India, Prabhu tells foreign firms

Railways to get over $140 billion investment in the next five years

Vishwas Dass | May 4, 2017 | New Delhi

#Railways #Suresh Prabhu #RDSO #foreign firms #technology #AK Mital

Railway minister Suresh Prabhu has urged global technology players to come forward to co-develop technologies with India.

“India is not just another destination where we can import technology and use them,” Prabhu said while inaugurating Research Designs and Standards Origanisation’s (RDSO) international conclave on Global Technology Conference in New Delhi.

Prabhu said India offers good opportunities to international firms to co-develop technologies for the railways.

“Global firms should try to develop cutting edge technologies with their Indian counterpart, (whether it is) private or government entities. India is a big market for the global suppliers of technology at the same time it is important to understand that make in India is one part and develop in India is another,” the minister said on Thursday.

He admitted that Indian Railways lagged behind in the race of modernisation because of lack of investment. He, however, said that now the railways has stepped up investments and is having a clear cut five year roadmap.

“I am optimistic that in these five years we would invest over $140 billion. We should try to put in $300 billion into the railways (over the next 10 years). There is a plan of investing around $450 billion in the next 15 years into the railways to expect huge transformation in the Indian Railways at par with global railways,” Prabhu said.

He laid emphasis on exploiting cutting edge technology and modernising the railways for the betterment of rail users. He said that railways across the world are upgrading themselves and evolving which should prompt Indian Railways to learn such modern technologies and use them for day to day operations.

“RDSO will have to ensure that the railways adopt cutting edge technologies in the shortest possible time. We must set some deadlines to conclude how we should proceed about it,” he said.

“Look at the seriousness of the Indian Railways in implementing new reforms and therefore, the global players should try to co-develop technologies,” he added.

The conference covered issues like enhanced safety, reduced in-service failures and automated Health monitoring & Inspection, capacity enhancement and congestion reduction and enhanced customer service. Over 50 speakers from India and abroad gave their presentations on various subjects.

Railway board chairman A K Mital spoke of how Indian Railways lagged behind other developed countries due to lack of technology development and implementation.

“Indian Railways came into being around 165 years back. The technology available with the Indian Railways at that time was almost of the same standard as was available in abroad. But, now we have lagged behind substantially behind other developed countries. There have been changes in the Indian Railways but those have been marginal. We used to have tie-ups with foreign collaborators to develop technology, but the pace was very slow,” Mital said.

He said country like China did not have high speed trains but they got it from Japan, Germany and France and adopted, assimilated and improved them before they started exporting it. “We have been good at accepting technology and assimilating, but we have not improved upon that.”

Comments

Other News

MDR on UPI: Can sustainability come without weakening the network?

The extraordinary transaction volumes and value (₹29.82 Lakh crore in August 2026 alone) of the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) have made it not only an Indian success story, but a global one. In 2024, UPI accounted for nearly 49% of the world’s real-time payment transaction volume, with more th

The Xi-Trump summit: The unending rivalry

Diplomacy is akin to an art, wherein the summitry, conflict resolution and negotiations form apt constituents of the entire context of deal making and “playing for keeps” in the international arena. The Xi-Trump summit in Washington last week, in which the American president broke all conside

“Indians, yet treated like outsiders”

Moving to Delhi-NCR for education can be an exciting experience for students from Northeast India. It gives us a chance to meet new people, experience a different culture and become more independent. But living away from home also comes with challenges that people who have not experienced them may not al

Import duty on major edible oils cut

The government has reduced the Basic Customs Duty (BCD) on major imported crude edible oils with a view to moderating domestic edible oil prices, providing relief to consumers and mitigating inflationary pressures arising from the sharp increase in international edible oil prices.

From pyramid to platform: BRICS agenda for Global South

In his opening address at the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12, prime minister Narendra Modi did something India`s diplomacy has been building towards for three years: he moved the ‘Voice of the Global South’ from a slogan to a work plan. Addressing the leaders, he argued that t

How to realise the full transformative potential of PM-JAY

The Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), a welfare scheme which covers approximately 45 crore beneficiaries across India, provides cashless health cover of Rs. 5 lakh per family per year. It is the largest health insurance scheme which helped crores of poor families by reducing out-of-pocket expend