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More than 2500 business and diplomatic delegates from the world over are expected for Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy’s dream Global Investors Summit for his beloved Andhra Pradesh. No ambition is too high for the mega AP GIS 2023 as the invitee list includes global biggies like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos & Tim Cook. While their attendance is not highly probable even if a US state is hosting such an event, the very fact that AP had the ambition to invite them shows the scale at which the young and dynamic CM of Andhra Pradesh is acting. At the same time, Jagan Mohan Reddy is never one to inflate the might of the investment proposals expected, and has kept it at a surprisingly low and refreshing Rs. 1.85 lakh crore. While this figure is likely to be surpassed by a huge margin, CM Jagan’s focus for GIS 2023 is sharp and revolves around 13 most promising sectors in the state. And even above that is his plans for Visakhapatnam, the state’s commercial capital that the CM prefers to be the political capital too. Andhra’s plans for Vizag is nothing short of building it up as a world-class metro city that can rival Bengaluru, Chennai or Hyderabad.

Chief Minister Jagan Mohan Reddy has been working round the clock for ensuring the success of the upcoming Andhra Pradesh Global Investors Summit 2023, scheduled for March 3 & 4 at Visakhapatnam. Close on the heels of the highly successful New Delhi roadshow for the event, that CM had personally led, he has unleashed a slew of initiatives for increasing the momentum even more in the run up to the event.

Under the Chief Minister’s direction, the Andhra Pradesh State Investment Promotion Board (SIPB) has recently cleared investment proposals worth Rs. 1,44,000 crores in the state. This figure assumes significance as the state’s investment target for the GIS 2023 has been kept at Rs. 1,85,000 crore, and this shows that despite what his detractors say about the economic situation of the state, Andhra Pradesh has no trouble in attracting major investments, whether there is a GIS or not.

However, a Global Investors Summit, especially in the scale that CM Jagan is planning will definitely help much more than routine investments pouring into the state, in many ways. For one, AP GIS 2023 has 13 focus areas that are most promising for Andhra.

These designated focus sectors for GIS 2023 are Aerospace & Defence, Agriculture & Food Processing, Automobile & Electric Vehicles, Electronics & IT, Healthcare & Medical Equipment, Industrial & Logistics Infrastructure, MSME, Startups & Innovation, Petroleum & Petrochemicals, Pharmaceuticals & Life Sciences, Renewable Energy, Skill Development & Education, Textiles & Apparel, and Tourism & Hospitality.

While it is customary now for almost all statelevel investment summits to designate such focus sectors, in the case of Andhra Pradesh, the state seems to have done its homework well in this regard. Under CM’s guidance, the state has already made it a point to personally invite the

13 Central Ministers who are handling these crucial growth sectors at Delhi.

Such steps Jagan has taken despite the growing animosity between his ruling YSRCP and BJP. While they were traditional allies, with Jagan enjoying a personal rapport with Prime Minister Narendra Modi too, in recent months both parties have been at loggerheads over many issues. However, the pragmatist in Jagan knows that such fights are inevitable as BJP tries to carve its own space in the new Andhra which is dominated by traditional rivals YSRCP and Telugu Desam Party.

Jagan is focused and astute enough to do what is best for the state, and has invited PM Modi himself to inaugurate the AP GIS 2023. In another example of not picking up unnecessary fights with Centre and the ruling BJP, Jagan had warmly welcomed the new Andhra Pradesh Governor S Abdul Nazeer, whose appointment had courted some controversy with opposition parties in India crying foul about it, as he was recently serving in the Supreme Court as a judge. Such pragmatic steps help CM Jagan stay focused on the more important issues for Andhra. For instance, while clearing the Rs. 1.44 lakh crore worth of investment proposals in the state recently, the CM had directed officials to ensure that 75% of jobs in those proposed projects are given to local residents.

Such a step is vital for bringing development into every nook and corner of the state, not to speak about the different cities vying to be the capital of the state,

Jagan Mohan Reddy Chief Minister

or for economic prominence, like Amaravati, Vijayawada, Vizag and Kurnool. Under CM Jagan’s guidance, the state is all set to launch a new industrial policy soon, which will walk the tightrope of ensuring ease of business as well as employee welfare.

The host city of AP GIS 2023, Visakhapatnam, is the second largest city on India’s east coast, after Chennai. This has helped Andhra in projecting itself as India’s window to South East Asia, which is a core theme of GIS 2023. All roads will lead to Visakhapatnam during March 3 & 4, as CM Jagan will lead in showcasing the state’s success in attracting high profile investments, and especially its surging rise in the Ease of Doing Business indices.

It is usual for India’s various states to host similar Global Investors Summits, away from their capital cities, and preferably in their economic or financial capitals. Andhra Pradesh too is not toeing a different line, as Visakhapatnam or Vizag as it is affectionately called, is indeed Andhra’s largest city and de facto economic capital, after its erstwhile capital Hyderabad became a part of neighbouring Telangana when it was carved out from Andhra 9 years back.

But this time around, CM Jagan Reddy is doing it with a significant difference. In a recent curtain raiser to the global event, Chief Minister Jagan had also announced that Vizag is also destined to be Andhra Pradesh’s new capital city. This has been widely hailed by most sections of India Inc. as Vizag indeed has several aces up its sleeve, compared with the current capital Amaravati which is really a new city.

Though his plan for a decentralized threecapital-city formula, with Vizag as executive capital, Amaravati as legislative capital and Kurnool as judicial capital has run into rough weather, Jagan has shown much boldness with his recent announcement that Vizag will indeed be Andhra’s new capital.

This kind of decisiveness from the CM breaks the years-long stalemate in the state after losing Hyderabad, and will definitely position Vizag as something similar to Bengaluru which is neighbouring Karnataka’s both political and economic capital. No other city in Karnataka comes anywhere near Bengaluru in prospects, and this same model can be a huge success in Andhra too if Vizag is made the capital city.

CM Jagan Reddy has also made it clear that the prospects of Vizag will be the chief attraction during the upcoming Global Investors Summit. Vizag has many unique claims to its fame, apart from being Andhra’s largest city and Indian east coast’s second largest. It is the largest city by population too and therefore Andhra’s biggest consumer and labour market.

It is the only city in India with two major ports. Vizag is also the headquarters of India’s Eastern Naval Command which gives it a head up on attracting defence businesses. Major Indian and international business groups including Cadbury India, Kia of Korea, Saint-Gobain, Toray of Japan, Everton Tea India, Apache & Hilltop of Taiwan and several others have come forward recently to applaud Andhra’s edge in ease of doing business.

CM Jagan has also been determined to ensure that the poor performers from among his party rank and file are to be replaced with promising new leaders. A major overhaul of YSRCP is expected anytime now - nicknamed Jagan’s hitlist - that will replace some non-performing ministers and MLA from the key posts they handle now. For identifying such poor performers, CM is said to be relying on the state’s own intelligence mechanism as well as independent sources like Indian Political Action Committee (I-PAC).

With the state scheduled to go for polls next year, the success of GIS 2023 and his administration in general is critical for Jagan to return to power and continue his socio-economic reforms for Andhra. Towards this, he has already indicated that only high performers or the winning horses will be given tickets to contest in the polls, in which rival TDP is expected to put up a stiff fight to come back to power.

Ministers and MLAs are also being assessed also for their participation in the noted program ‘Gadapa Gadapaku Prabhutvam’, which was about spending time in bettering the governance. Also, preference is being given for those party workers who are willing to be ‘Gruha Sarathulu’ or door-to-door campaigners for the party and government.

They will be given special training, and soon after the GIS 2023, YSRCP is all set to launch their poll-bound program, ‘Jagan is Our Future’, which will explain door-to-door how the CM’s initiatives including the GIS have been delivering big for the state.

CM Jagan Reddy is also launching a new civic grievance platform named ‘Jaganannaku Chebudam’ which stands for ‘Let’s Talk to Jagan’. The CM has already indicated the length to which he is willing to travel for its success when he said that no complainant would be left unhappy at the end of the process.

Every complaint and civic grievance must be resolved within the stipulated deadline, under this initiative. ‘Jaganannaku Chebudam’ is expected to consolidate Jagan’s major wins so far among the public as it is aimed at addressing civic grievances at mandal, divisional and district level. The programme is being designed in such a way that people should feel that their grievances have been resolved as it has reached CM Jagan.

Separate teams for the tracking of complaints, project management, audit and analysis are being appointed to handle the programme. A major innovation that has been brought to the system is ensuring accountability. Under this, field officers cannot merely pass on the matter to senior officials and senior officials cannot keep referring the matter back to field officials. The administration at some point should find a solution to the grievance and close the petition to the satisfaction of the complainant.

Such innovations spring directly from Jagan’s handson and compassionate leadership. The CM was dissatisfied with the current redressal mechanism, Spandana, in which around 50% of cases were not being resolved effectively or in time. In discussions to create the new system, Jagan had exhorted the district collectors to resolve people’s pending issues with a personal touch, good judgement, helpful interpretation of the rules and the right spirit.

Under CM Jagan’s visionary leadership, Andhra has also chalked out an ambitious plan to emerge once again as a powerhouse in the IT sector, where it once had the uniquely successful destination of Hyderabad. Jagan’s new plan for the IT sector is to attract more IT companies into the state during this GIS by projecting and facilitating three new IT industry corridors - Visakhapatnam-Chennai, HyderabadBengaluru, and Bengaluru-Chennai - all of which passes much through the state.

1) The foundation stone of YSR Steel Corporation Ltd has been laid, which will be an enterprise to manufacture high-grade steel products with a capacity of up to 3.3 million metric tonnes per annum (MTPA). It will take advantage of its closeness to major auto and industrial hubs, proximity to raw material sources, and connectivity by road, rail, sea, and air. It will drive the region’s growth by providing direct and indirect employment opportunities for over 25,000 people.

2 ) Since steel making is a CO2 emission intensive process, new technologies like Hydrogen are in the process of consideration in the commercial operations in the state. Government will actively support the technology providers to develop and establish the low carbon steel making in the state. Government also is actively pursuing the natural gas pipeline projects of the state, which will enable the steel industry to adopt the latest technologies and reduce the carbon footprint.

3) Since Andhra Pradesh ranks high in production of grains such as Rice and Maize,the governmentis pushing for the production of ethanol in the state and towards this has identified Ethanol Manufacturing as one of the priority sectors. The Government of Andhra Pradesh intends to provide best-in-class support for ethanol production including an Ethanol

Production Policy and this will provide vast employment to local, women and skilled workers.

4 ) The government of Andhra Pradesh is now placing significant thrust on the adoption of sustainable green measures across industries in the state. Common facilities like Waste water treatment, Continuous Emission Monitoring System (CEMS) etc. would be setup in new APIIC Industrial parks.

5) The Andhra government is setting up 26 secondary food processing units, one in each parliamentary constituency, with an investment of Rs.3500 Cr, holding potential to create direct employment to 10,000 people and indirect employment to 23,000 people.

6) The government is developing 9 new fishing harbors in two phases with an outlay of approx. Rs 4,000 Cr of investment. These facilities will benefit 60,000 fishermen directly and will create additional employment of 35,000 from allied activities such as ice plants, cold storages, preprocessing, fish transport, marketing which will be operationalized by 2023-24 in a phased manner.

7) The AP Government is planning to develop Andhra Pradesh into a logistics hub not only for India but also targeting the entire South Asia, just like how the city-state of Singapore, has emerged as a logistics hub due to its favorable policy structure, use of IT, skilled manpower and standards for logistics and warehousing.

8) Airports are given special thrust inAP and the current developments are greenfield airports at Bhogapuram Visakhapatnam model. The Uyyalawada Narasimha Reddy Kurnool Airport has already been developed and inaugurated. Also being planned is an Aerotropolis where infrastructure, land use, and economy are centered on an airport and necessary studies at now being undertaken for the Kurnool Airport, to cater to the technical infrastructure needs of the Orvakallu Mega Industrial Hub region.

9) A Dedicated Freight Corridor of 1,080 kms between Vijayawada –Kharagpur section will provide connectivity to Visakhapatnam, Gangavaram, Kakinada, Krishnapatnam and Machilipatnam ports in Andhra Pradesh, ensuring faster movement of goods and capacity enhancement in the oversaturated sections of the railway network. Another 890 rkm (Route Kilometer) North South sub-corridor Vijayawada- Vijayawada-NagpurItarsi (Madhya Pradesh) route.

10) Under CM Jagan, the state has also been ranked as the top state in the country for the ‘Ease of Doing Business’ by the Government of India, offering a robust industrial infrastructure, first-class connectivity and skilled workforce, making it a globally competitive investment destination.

11 ) A multi-faceted business enablement centre, christened as “YSR AP One” is being developed which will be a one stop shop offering business/ and investor support services.

12) Unlike under earlier regimes, the Jagan government has organized an unprecedented number of industrial interactions, that include over 200+ CEO, Embassy, and Inbound delegation interactions, 50+ Sector-specific roadshows and 15 Ministerial-led national and international investment roadshows since 2019-20, including a highly successful one in Dubai during Dubai Expo 2020.

13) Exports are faring well under the Jagan government, with total exports from Andhra Pradesh in 2021-22 being Rs. 1,57,398 Cr ($ 19 Bn USD) with a growth rate of 13% CAGR during the last three years. The major exports from the State are Drugs & Pharmaceuticals, Marine products, Agriculture produce, and Agro- based products, Handicrafts, and Engineering products.

14) AP’s new industrial policy by the Jagan government is a major pull towards the state. The core theme of the industrial policy of Andhra Pradesh is to provide support to industries across the business value chain – from approvals to setup & going beyond setup, supporting operations & scaling up. We would like to mention some salient features of the policy :

15) AP’s MSME ReStart Package has been a big breakthrough in the sector with its release of industrial incentives for revival. This was done factoring the hardships faced by the MSMEs during the Covid-19 pandemic. The Rs 962.42 Crore ‘ReSTART’ Package in May 2020 had helped about 8,000 MSMEs to restart their operations.

IT CAN SOMETIMES FEEL AS THOUGH WE LIVE IN UNIQUELY DIFFICULT TIMES. ZENO OF CITIUM DEVELOPED STOICISM TO TEACH HOW TO FACE SUCH CHALLENGES. LATER STOIC PHILOSOPHERS OFFERED PERTINENT ADVICE ON HOW TO ADJUST OUR PERCEPTION AROUND STRUGGLES AND LIVE A FULFILLING LIFE.

Wars, disease, economic upheavals, and political strife dominate news headlines. Traditions, once the terra firma of our lives, have split along cultural fault lines and are shifting widely. And the lessons imparted to us by our parents seem completely out of touch with the challenges we face daily. In short, there seems to be much cause for sadness, despondence, and being overwhelmed by life.

We are not special in this regard, though. Our modern circumstances may be idiomatic — Plato worried over the harms of pervasive poetry; not social media would have thrown him for a loop — but strife and struggle have been universals of human history. Every generation has had to endure both to various degrees.

Amid those struggles, our ancestors developed and refined a variety of traditions to help them persevere, and we can draw on those traditions to give us a leg up in facing our contemporary challenges. These traditions include the religious doctrine of Buddhism from India, the philosophy of Chinese Taoism, the humanism of the European Enlightenment, and the topic of today’s article, the Stoicism of Hellenistic Greece.

Zeno of Citium founded Stoicism in the 3rd century BC. He lived in Athens and lectured in the open market at a place called the stoa poikile — literally “painted porch” and Stoicism’s namesake. That’s important for understanding Zeno’s philosophy because this period of history represented a time of profound change and unrest.

In 323 BC, Alexander the Great died without an obvious heir, leaving his kingdom to be fought over and subsequently carved up by his generals. As a result, the Greek poleis became subsumed by larger political entities run by professional bureaucrats. Where once Greek freemen operated in democratic city-states, they were now entangled in large, more impersonal empires.

In the words of Chloè Valdary, founder of Theory of Enchantment, it was an era of “existential homelessness,” and many

Greeks found themselves saddled with traditions and a worldview that no longer matched the social and political disorder surrounding them.

Within that existential despair, Stoicism developed as a unified philosophy that sought to understand the essence of knowledge and the natural order of the cosmos. From that pursuit, the Stoics derived an ethic that, in the words of philosopher Simon Blackburn, focused on self-sufficiency, benevolent calm, and a near-indifference to pain, poverty, and death. This would in turn lead to happiness (in the eudaimonic sense of the word).

As Stoicism moved from the Hellenistic period into the Roman world, its ethics took center stage, becoming the reason for the philosophy. It centered on how the practice of virtue could be applied to everyday living through sound judgment, proper character, and the rejection of vice. It does this by considering where we should and shouldn’t place our efforts. Today, that emphasis on engaging with everyday life has seen Stoicism revived as a kind of practical philosophy. It draws strongly from Stoicism’s later Roman practitioners and is often used in tandem with other strategies for coping and emotional regulation.

As such, you can use the quotes below without having to dust off earlier Stoic concepts like the phantasia kataleptikç or the logos spermatikos. (So no worries if you haven’t brushed up on your ancient Greek.)

“Things do not touch the soul, for they are external and remain immovable.”Marcus

Aurelius.

As Valdary noted in an interview: “Stoicism is all about getting us in [the] right relationship with the things that we can control and we can’t control.”

For example, Zeno’s Greek contemporaries couldn’t control Alexander the Great’s death or the ensuing social upheaval. Such things, as Aurelius put it, should be considered external and immovable. They do not touch a person’s soul because where someone lacks control, they also lack responsibility.

By worrying needlessly over what we aren’t responsible for, we distract ourselves from the things we can control. And if we can’t control such events, then why should they cause us undue suffering? If we aren’t responsible for something, why should it affect our happiness and fulfillment?

In the same section of Meditations (Book IV), Aurelius also warns that the world is always changing, and we can’t stop that from happening. We can only influence how we think and react to that change. As he writes, “The universe is transformation: life is opinion.”

“For as wood is the material of the carpenter, bronze that of the statuary, just so each man’s own life is the subject-matter of the art of living.” –Epictetus.

Now, Aurelius doesn’t mean we should live lives as moral recluses in total passivity. Far from it. We can (and should) strive to enrich our lives and the world in virtuous ways. The Stoics did this themselves when they taught their philosophy.

However, we need to understand where our control lies, and that responsibility is primarily with ourselves. Just as a carpenter shapes wood, Epictetus writes, so too are we responsible for the art of living. That art includes how we respond to our thoughts, our emotions, and the world outside of us.

In particular, this quote comes from a moment in The Discourses where Epictetus is consulting a man whose brother is upset with him. Like a true Stoic, Epictetus’s advice is for the man to tend to his emotional state and act according to his governing principles.

As for the brother: “Bring him to me, and I will talk to him,” Epictetus said, “but I have nothing to say to you on the subject of his anger.”

“We suffer more often in the imagination than in reality.” – Seneca

When our minds are filled with those “external” and “immovable” qualities of life, we often catastrophize more than is appropriate.

We exaggerate how bad a sickness is by doom-scrolling through Google results before visiting the doctor. We pronounce that the world is going to hell whenever an election doesn’t swing our party’s way. And we anticipate that a difficult conversation will be the end of our friendship. None of which, according to Seneca, is helpful in the least.

In Letters of a Stoic (Epistle XIII), the Stoic philosopher advises his interlocutor, Lucilius, that such catastrophizing does no good. It only makes us unhappy before the crisis, assuming the crisis comes at all. Instead, we should reign in our mind’s calamitous predictions and handle what’s before us with the proper care and attention.

Aurelius backs up Seneca on this point. As he notes in The Meditations (Book II), “Those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must, of necessity, be unhappy.”

Neither Seneca nor Aurelius are saying you’ll never feel pain, sorry, stress, anger, or a host of other unwelcome emotions. Outside events, as well as our internal struggles, will still give rise to these feelings naturally. They are part of the materials of the art of living, too. Rather, they teach us to not let our emotions grow strong enough to overwhelm us or blind us to reason. Better to understand the source of the emotion and treat it with the proper care than to continue suffering in the mind.

“What do you think that Hercules would have been if there had not been such a lion, and hydra, and stag, and boar, and certain unjust and bestial men, whom Hercules used to drive away and clear out?” - Epictetus.

Epictetus teaches that while difficult times are often, well, difficult, they can also be a means toward growth and selfimprovement. In The Discourses (Book I), he exemplifies this in the example of Hercules. Had Hercules not undergone his 12 labors, Epictetus contends, he would not have become the legendary Hercules. He would have wallowed his life away dreaming instead.

One can say the same of the Greeks during the Hellenistic period. While it was a time of immense social and political tumult, it was also a cultural renaissance that birthed new ways of thinking and expression.

New forms of art, music, and literature emerged. Science and invention reached new heights under thinkers such as Euclid and Archimedes. And alongside Stoicism, the era gave birth to the philosophies of Epicureanism and Neoplatonism as well.

Modern science backs up Epictetus’s claim. According to Paul Bloom, a professor of psychology at Yale University, research shows that the most meaningful jobs aren’t the most luxurious, highest paying, or those of the highest status. Instead, they are jobs that involve struggle and difficulty, such as being an education or medical professional.

“I think that the way people think about a meaningful life is that it requires some degree of suffering,” Bloom said in an interview. “That suffering could be physical pain. It could be difficult; it could be worrying. It could be the possibility of failure. But stripped of that, the experience isn’t meaningful. We need pain and suffering to have rich and happy lives.”

With that said, Bloom and Epictetus both put caveats on this dictum. Epictetus warns that a person shouldn’t go searching for lions and hydras simply to introduce suffering to their lives. Similarly, Bloom distinguishes between

“chosen suffering” (such as exercise) and “unchosen suffering” (such as chronic pain from disease).

But we shouldn’t turn away from suffering simply because it’s difficult, painful, or includes the possibility of failure as many of life’s great achievements can be found within that struggle.

“The first thing which philosophy undertakes to give is fellow-feeling with all men; in other words, sympathy and sociability.” – Seneca

So far, we’ve looked at how the Stoics taught individuals to approach difficult times. That may make it seem as though Stoicism is some kind of proto-libertarian philosophy. Just take care of yourself and let the rest of the world take care of itself.

That characterization, while common, is also misleading. As this quote from Seneca’s letters (Epistle V) makes clear, Stoicism advises us to be there for others, and the way we can do that is through sympathy and companionship.

Consider friendship. In Epistle IX, Seneca writes: “For what purpose, then, do I make a man my friend? In order to have someone for whom I may die, whom I may follow into exile, against whose death I may stake my own life, and pay the pledge, too.”

For Seneca, a friend isn’t someone who can come to the rescue and solve your problems for you. Like Epictetus with his angry brothers, Seneca can’t save his friend from exile or death. He can’t change a friend’s mind or live his life for him. Nor would Seneca expect a friend to take responsibility for his problems or emotions either.

Instead, a friend is someone whom we experience the shared experiences of life with. They can make the good times better, but they also stand by us during life’s struggles. They can listen to our ideas and point out our blind spots. Their compassion can help us cope with life’s losses.

In other words, simply through sympathy and companionship, a friend becomes a source of immense strength that helps us along our individual paths. And that can be true of any relationship. “Compassion is about learning how to be with ourselves and our fellow humans in their suffering,” Valdery said. “Stoicism is as much about having compassion for others as selfcompassion on our individual journeys toward fulfillment and happiness.”

(Credit: Kevin Dickinson for Big Think) he Union Budget for 2023-24, presented by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in Parliament saw a significant increase in the amount of public funds set aside for capital expenditure.

As Ms Sitharaman pointed out, this was the third successive Budget with a major scale-up in government capital expenditure. Of the Rs 10 trillion set aside for this, more than half will go to the transport sector. And around half of that — about Rs 2.4 trillion — will go to the Indian Railways in particular, taking its capital expenditure to Rs 2.6 trillion for the year. The government is to be commended for its sustained emphasis on infrastructure spending in its Budgets and by correctly identifying the problem of underinvestment that has plagued many of India’s core infrastructure sectors, especially transport.

The Indian Railways, the workhorse of connectivity in the country and the backbone of its industrial economy, has been a particular target for underinvestment and thus it is excellent news that this trend has reversed. There are multiple ways in which this money could be used within the railways. The Budget numbers indicate, for example, that Rs 30,000 crore has been set aside for the doubling of tracks, and that was less than Rs 9,000 crore in 2021-22. Further, Rs 32,000 crore is to be spent on new tracks, and that is about a 50 per cent increase from two years ago. Almost Rs 40,000 crore is to go into rolling stock, which received just Rs 8,000 crore in last year’s Budget. And Rs 8,000 crore has been earmarked specifically for electrification.

These are big numbers, and reasonable questions can be asked about the railways’ absorption and implementation capacity over the next year for this expanded capital budget. There are, however, even longer-term questions that must be asked. While capital investment in the railways is overdue, it must be accompanied with a plan that makes such ongoing capex financially sustainable. This cannot be a one-time effort, but equally this level of support from the Union Budget cannot always be expected, given that the government will need to consolidate its overall fiscal position in the coming years. Therefore, work must begin now on understanding how to make the railways earn enough to generate meaningful surpluses to invest in its own improvements. This will require tariff reform, and the end to the massive cross-subsidisation through freight costs of passenger travel. The latter must, in effect, be made sustainable if not profitable in order to ensure that any returns from freight service can be ploughed back into system management and improvements.

Naturally this will not easily happen under the current system of management. Therefore, alongside financial reform, administrative reform and greater independence from political control must also be a priority. The government’s focus on infrastructure and the railways in particular is valuable and should be welcomed, but it cannot stop merely at budgetary allocation. Reforming processes and creating independent centres of power that have the ability and authority to set tariffs are a necessary additional step if the current vast investment in the network is to pay off over time and not be wasted.