Opinion: Time Now To Make Railway Stations Of Bharat Future-Ready
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To make stations truly future-ready, the current modernisation plan must be reimagined, including the substantial construction of new, modern and greenfield terminal stations
On May 22, 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi dedicated 103 revamped railway stations to the nation. These stations are located in 86 districts across 18 states and union territories, and form part of the Amrit Bharat Station Scheme (ABSS).
This undoubtedly marks a major milestone in Indian Railways' quest to modernise its stations, with the immediate goal of transforming over 1,300 stations countrywide into new-age, customer-friendly transport hubs.
However, these are just initial steps. I will explain this further later. Suffice it to say at this juncture that there is still a long way to go. Why do I say so? Here is a tale of two experiences.
A SURREAL WORLD-CLASS EXPERIENCE
Two months ago, on March 9, I took my first train journey in a decade. I travelled aboard the made-in-India Vande Bharat Express from Jaipur Junction Station to Delhi Cantt station.
True to its name, the Vande Bharat journey was a truly exceptional, world-class experience.
A TALE OF TWO HARROWING EXPERIENCES
However, in stark contrast to the marvellous journey on the Vande Bharat Express, my experience entering and exiting Jaipur and Delhi Cantt stations respectively was harrowing. Here's what happened:
Ingress at Jaipur Junction Station: As the car driven by my host, a former senior railway official, approached Jaipur station, we encountered significant traffic chaos. This was due to a combination of factors, including disorganised traffic flow and a lack of designated drop-off points for cabs and private vehicles. Upon entering the station, navigating the narrow, congested platform to my coach was so tortuous that I almost missed boarding the train.
Egress at Delhi Cantt station: With its four platforms and four tracks, Delhi Cantt station primarily caters to traffic from or going to the important tourist states of Rajasthan and Gujarat.
The egress experience at this notoriously senior-citizen-unfriendly station warrants further explanation. I found it suffocating to negotiate the long queue of passengers, dragging my two pieces of luggage for what felt like a kilometre, finally reaching the raucous auto-rickshaw drivers. With the nearest metro station (Cantt Metro Station) 4 km away and app-based taxis (Ola/Uber) unavailable, I had no choice but to pay four times the normal fare to reach my destination, the India International Centre.
What holds true for Delhi Cantt is even truer for New Delhi railway station, one of the biggest and busiest in the country, whose modernisation has been stalled for the last 25 years. The situation is largely the same at other NCR stations, including Old Delhi.
CRUX OF THE MATTER
This article addresses the sorry state of railway stations across Bharat, which are in dire need of upgradation, revamping, and modernisation. Most of these stations, constructed before India's independence, were not designed to handle even the current level of rail traffic and are grossly inadequate for future demand.
Therefore, this article proposes a pathway for the planned and modular modernisation of stations, ensuring they are future-ready to meet the demands of a developed rail network in a developed Bharat by 2047.
A JOURNEY THROUGH TIME
Following its reorganisation in 1950-51, Indian Railways, with a route length of 53,596 kilometres and around 7,500 stations, carried 1.2 billion originating passengers on 3,327 mail/express trains and 4,610 passenger trains daily. In contrast, in 2024-25, the Indian Railways network, spanning 70,000 route kilometres and 8,500 stations, carried 7.15 billion passengers on over 13,000 passenger trains. These included 4,111 mail and express trains, 3,313 passenger trains, and 5,774 suburban trains. Furthermore, a significant number of special trains operated during the summer vacation period.
THE LEGACY
On May 20, a PIB news release titled 'Amrit Bharat Station Scheme: A New Era for Indian Rail Infrastructure" aptly summarised the importance of railway stations to the heart of Bharat and how these stations have remained largely unchanged, even decayed, over decades:
'Railway stations have long been the heartbeats of Indian towns and cities, bustling with stories, memories and movement. While they have faithfully served millions over the years, many of these spaces have stayed largely unchanged, quietly waiting for a new chapter."
As the government rightly acknowledges, railway stations in India have largely remained stagnant, 'quietly waiting for a new chapter", while passenger numbers have increased sevenfold since 1950-51. More importantly, there is an urgent need to make railway stations future-ready to meet the challenges of a multifold increase in passenger traffic between now and 2047, when Bharat aspires to become a developed nation.
If this legacy is to be transformed into the heartbeat of every Indian, railway stations must undergo a fundamental transformation and address the myriad problems they face today.
KEY ISSUES
To become future-ready, railway stations must overcome several key existential issues:
1. AGED AND OUTDATED INFRASTRUCTURE
Most railway stations, built pre-independence to meet limited passenger traffic demands, have not updated their infrastructure to cope with the surge in traffic.
Station infrastructure, including entry and exit points, platform dimensions, parking areas, and passenger amenities, is grossly insufficient to meet current demand.
While stations constructed during the British era suffer from outdated and dilapidated infrastructure, even those opened post-independence have not been adequately updated.
A case in point is New Delhi station, the primary railway station in the national capital. Although inaugurated in 1956, its infrastructure soon became inadequate. For the last three decades, it has been in dire need of a complete infrastructure overhaul and modernisation.
While New Delhi station may be an extreme example, the situation is as bad, if not worse, at most other stations. These stations are plagued by poor infrastructure, inadequate maintenance, a severe backlog of critical asset renewals, and a lack of essential passenger amenities.
2. OVERCROWDING AND POOR CROWD MANAGEMENT
In 1950, over 80% of passengers travelled by train. This figure has decreased substantially to 10% in 2024-25. However, in absolute terms, the number of rail passengers has grown sevenfold. The most acute problem faced by stations is increasing overcrowding coupled with extremely poor crowd management.
This problem is most severe at larger stations but is becoming equally concerning at mid-sized and smaller stations.
While overcrowding is a daily problem that is becoming increasingly unmanageable, it becomes completely unmanageable during festivals and special events. Chaos frequently ensues, especially with sudden platform changes, which require numerous passengers to negotiate often solitary and rickety foot overbridges.
The average dimensions of railway platforms, fixed over a century ago, are grossly inadequate to accommodate the large number of passengers on increasingly long trains. Furthermore, there is a serious lack of adequate holding areas, ineffective crowd control measures, and insufficient emergency response mechanisms. The absence of proper barricading and unidirectional movement planning exacerbates the risk of crowd-related tragedies, as witnessed in incidents like the February 2025 New Delhi station stampede.
3. INFORMAL SECTOR CHALLENGES
Railway platforms face numerous challenges related to unauthorised entry, unregulated platform ticket holders, railway porters, and numerous informal vendors. Addressing the livelihoods of those dependent on the informal economy around stations, both on and off the platforms, is a complex socio-economic challenge.
4. TRAFFIC SNARLS
Navigating various transportation modes converging at or departing from railway stations has become an impossible scenario, regardless of station size. The examples of Jaipur and Delhi Cantt stations cited earlier are just a glimpse of the problem.
5. LACK OF PASSENGER AMENITIES AND POOR SANITATION: A common feature of most railway stations is the disregard for passenger amenities and the extraordinarily poor level of sanitation. Even recently redeveloped 'world-class" stations struggle with poor sanitation, unclean washrooms, and inadequate cleaning. The situation is worse at Tier 2 and Tier 3 city stations, which lack basic amenities and suffer from extremely poor sanitation and chaotic conditions both within and around the stations.
THE URGENT NEED FOR MODERNISATION
Evidently, while railway stations grapple with numerous legacy problems, efforts to upgrade or modernise them to meet the needs of ever-increasing travellers have been few and far between, whether retrofitting existing stations or building much-needed greenfield stations.
Moreover, even when intentions to upgrade or modernise stations have been announced, implementation has been tardy and flawed.
UNFULFILLED PROMISES
While some incremental cosmetic improvements have been made, the first serious attempt at large-scale station modernisation was announced on 26 February 2008 by then Railway Minister Lalu Prasad in the fifth and final Railway Budget speech of the UPA-I government.
Announcing his mega plan to modernise 50 major railway stations through public-private partnerships (PPPs), Lalu Prasad stated in Parliament:
'I am happy to inform the House that through global competitive bidding, PPP concessions would be awarded for developing the New Delhi, Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai, Patna and Secunderabad railway stations into world class stations during 2008-09. We expect to attract an investment of nearly Rs 15,000 cr on these stations."
THE MEGA MODERNISATION PLAN
Lalu Prasad's modernisation plan was transformative. It envisioned substantial improvements to station buildings, integrating them with both sides of the city, providing world-class amenities for all passengers, including those with reduced mobility and senior citizens, ensuring multimodal integration, implementing environmental solutions, and eventually creating city centres at stations.
ZERO PROGRESS
Despite the grandiose plan to create 'world-class stations" comparable to 'modernised world-class airports in Indian metropolises", the plan failed at the first implementation hurdle. While the government hoped the private sector would embrace the PPP model, nothing happened, and the situation at railway stations continued to deteriorate.
Against the promised mega modernisation of over 50 stations, not a single station was modernised or saw any serious modernisation efforts during the five years of the UPA-II government.
ENTER NARENDRA MODI
From his first meeting with railway officials, Prime Minister Narendra Modi prioritised station modernisation during his first term in office (NDA-I). However, this remained an Achilles' heel even for Mr Modi, who does not readily accept defeat.
The initial idea was again to pursue PPP-based modernisation.
But the mega programme remained stalled.
THE JIGSAW PUZZLE
With no solution to the station modernisation puzzle in the first five years of the Modi regime, a committee of five secretaries, chaired by then NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant, was formed in 2019 to find a way to redevelop 50 railway stations.
The committee's challenge was to devise a financially viable model that would attract private developers to invest substantial capital through PPPs.
In 2021, NITI Aayog released a model concession agreement allowing private concessionaires to develop railway stations and recover their investment through user development fees, similar to airports. However, the idea of user fees for railway stations, used by all strata of society, particularly the lower classes, was not politically or bureaucratically acceptable.
Thus, despite the committee's efforts, the puzzle remained unsolved.
THE IMPASSE
Throughout the second term of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (UPA-II) and the first two terms of Prime Minister Narendra Modi (NDA-I and NDA-II), it became clear that PPP-based station modernisation, relying on asset or land monetisation, was not feasible. Multiple bids and countless discussions with private sector parties led to a single conclusion: the PPP route was jinxed and unworkable.
While many airports and even Inter State Bus Terminals (ISBTs) were developed through PPPs, the only railway station developed this way, after considerable difficulty, was Rani Kamlapati station (formerly Habibganj) in Bhopal.
DEVELOPMENT AND HERITAGE
The repeated failures of successive governments to solve the railway modernisation riddle led to a rethink. In early 2023, Prime Minister Modi opted for the tried-and-tested engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract model. Under this model, the government retains ownership of the stations, the private sector modernises them, and receives payment for services rendered, while the public benefits from the upgraded stations.
This led to the emergence of the Amrit Bharat Station Scheme, which Prime Minister Modi aptly described as 'Vikas and Virasat" (Development and Heritage).
FROM HUMBLE BEGINNINGS TO ACCELERATION
The Amrit Bharat Station Scheme originated in 2021 with the modernisation of Gandhinagar railway station, complete with modern facilities and a five-star hotel. The subsequent modernisation of Sir M Visvesvaraya Terminal in Bengaluru, Ayodhya Dham, and Gomti Nagar station in Lucknow further boosted the scheme.
With the inauguration of 103 modernised stations under the scheme last month, the mega programme has gained much-needed traction.
DECODING THE AMRIT BHARAT STATION SCHEME
The Amrit Bharat Station Scheme is not a one-time upgrade. It is a long-term commitment to substantially improve railway stations nationwide in a modular, phased manner. This is based on comprehensive master plans for each station, with modernisation rolled out in stages depending on evolving needs. Key components of the scheme include:
Ease of Use: The primary objective is to make stations cleaner, more comfortable, and user-friendly. This includes improving entry/exit points, waiting halls, toilets, platforms, and roofing. Special attention is being paid to accessibility for persons with reduced mobility. Lifts, escalators, and free Wi-Fi will be provided as needed. Improved signage and information systems will assist passengers. Some stations will feature executive lounges and business meeting areas. Local products will be sold at kiosks under the 'One Station One Product" scheme.
Stations as Vibrant City Centres: The scheme also focuses on upgrading station buildings, connecting both sides of the city, and ultimately transforming stations into vibrant city centres serving multiple purposes beyond travel.
Multimodal Connectivity: A major aspect is linking stations with other transport options like buses and metros.
Futuristic and Eco-Friendly Stations: The scheme incorporates green building practices, renewable energy use, noise reduction measures, and futuristic planning.
GETTING FUTURE-READY
The government finally seems to have found the right approach. The Amrit Bharat Station Scheme, initially targeting 1,326 stations, will significantly enhance the travel experience for millions of passengers. It will deliver brand new stations, easier entry/exit, aesthetically pleasing facades, resurfaced platforms, landscaping, roof plazas, kiosks, food courts, and children's play areas, among other features.
The scheme also envisions wider roads connecting stations, removal of unwanted structures, improved signage, dedicated pedestrian pathways, enhanced parking, and better lighting.
But the question remains: is this enough? The short answer is a resounding no.
Why?
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The reason is simple: despite Indian Railways losing passengers to buses and air travel, the government projects that annual rail passenger numbers will grow from the current 7.15 billion to 20 billion by 2047, when India celebrates its centenary of independence. To make stations truly future-ready, the current modernisation plan must be reimagined, including the substantial construction of new, modern, greenfield terminal stations.
The author is multidisciplinary thought leader with Action Bias, India-based international impact consultant, and keen watcher of changing national and international scenarios. He works as president advisory services of consulting company BARSYL. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views.
Location :
New Delhi, India, India
First Published:
June 10, 2025, 17:59 IST
News opinion Opinion: Time Now To Make Railway Stations Of Bharat Future-Ready
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