Governance in India’s Public Transport Systems – Comparing Indian Railways and Airlines

The paper examines the basic reasons and feasible remedies for organizational
weakness, and the possible contribution of ownership, industry and management
structure, leadership, social norms, and institutional incentives to alleviating the
weaknesses in the Indian context. The arguments are illustrated with reference to the
public rail and air services and help to understand why some public sector transport
undertakings performed better than others. The most effective changes are those that
create incentives, broadly defined, for individuals to improve productivity.