Tuesday, October 21, 2008

My father’s business...

It takes 1 hour and 15 minutes by flight from Barcelona to Madrid while the duration for a train journey for the same by AVE train takes 2 hours 40 minutes. In India, a Kolkata to Delhi flight takes an hour and forty five minutes while the same by the fastest Indian train takes nothing less than 17 hours. That narrates Barcelona to Madridpart of the story, the rest follows.

When the Boston Consulting Group had introduced the concept of BCG Matrix consisting of the four types of companies that a group can have (i.e. cash cows, stars, question mark and dogs), never had it thought that the concept of cash cows would be used with so much impunity by a government of a country which has otherwise been loathe to carry on the concept of structural reforms. For long, the Indian Railways (IR) have been nothing but a typical cash cow for the government to propagate a messiah image; and for long, elected members of the Parliament have fought at large to grab this portfolio. The common saying goes that the best way to benchmark the performance of the Railway Minister is find out how many of his community and constituency have made it to Rail department. Nowadays, it’s an unofficial norm and doesn’t even elicit surprise among the media and mass. No wonder that Indian Railways have 14 lakh employees. One wonders if that many are essentially required or if there’s another instance of a company being mentored by so many. Incidentally, the Indian Army has lesser number of personnel.....Continue

Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri and Arindam chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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