Corporatization Of Railway Manufacturing

We have been hearing of the plans of central government to corporatize some state-owned & state-managed organizations in recent years and one of the areas is the Production Units (PUs) of Indian Railways IR); the factories in which IR manufactures its locomotives and trains and some capital spares. There are seven major units and involve some 40000 employees; three units, ICF/Chennai, RCF/Kapurthala and MCF/Rae Bareli, which manufacture coaches, three units, CLW/Chittaranjan, DLW/Varanasi and DLMW/Patiala, which manufacture locomotives and RWF/Bangalore, which manufactures railway wheels. The idea of disuniting these seven PUs from Indian Railways in as much as the latter is a government organization and transforming them into independent corporations as Public Sector Units (PSUs), albeit within the ambit of the Ministry of Railways, has been mooted from time to time. In 2019, however, after this government came to power again, the idea to hive off these PUs and bring them under one entity, a corporation tentatively called Indian Railways Rolling Stock Company, was floated as part of the 100 days action plan for Indian Railways. It also talked of beginning the corporatization process with the pilot implementation at MCF. More than a year since, it is anybody’s guess as to…