Of Bullets, Bureaucrats and Broken Signals: The HSR Train May Yet Redeem the Wait

 (Dr. Sudhanshu Mani. Written Nov. 25, updated Oct. 26)

India’s high-speed rail (HSR) story is a tale of ambition repeatedly overtaken by hesitation. It encompasses a compelling national need, genuine engineering achievements, diplomatic complications, bureaucratic muddle, misplaced pride, and a remarkable capacity to announce tomorrow’s network before finishing yesterday’s project.

The Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail (MAHSR) corridor was meant to mark India’s arrival in the world of bullet trains. Instead, it has become a test of whether the country can convert a bold political decision into a coherent, timely, and affordable railway.

The irony is that the case for SR is rock-solid. India’s population density, the vast distances between major cities, and the continuous growth of urban mega-regions make fast intercity connections far more than a mere prestige purchase. Properly planned, HSR can dramatically shorten journeys, ease pressure on roads and aviation, and encourage economic development beyond established metropolitan centres.

Another model, which has succeeded in countries, and brilliantly in Japan, is to finance HSR projects partly through transit-oriented real estate development. For example, if new townships are developed 50, 100, and 150 kilometres away from the Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC) terminus with dedicated HSR stops, many residents would willingly relocate there, knowing they remain within a one-hour daily commute of the urban core.

Rail is also substantially more energy-efficient than air travel for comparable passenger journeys. The expectation is that the heavily polluting air traffic between Mumbai and Ahmedabad will sharply decline, if not eliminated altogether, once the HSR corridor is commissioned. This shift is highly achievable; for instance, Germany’s Deutsche Bahn and Lufthansa pioneered an intermodal partnership where an airline ticket between Frankfurt and Stuttgart, Düsseldorf, or Köln is seamlessly integrated as an HSR journey instead of a short-haul flight. Air traffic between Frankfurt and Köln, approx.. 200 km apart and has become-non-existent as HSR covers it in an hour; One I brought an air ticket from berlin to Köln via Frankfurt and on arriving at Frankfurt,  I was directed to the Frankfurt Flughafen rail station for the next leg.

Dismissing HSR as an indulgence for the rich is as simplistic as presenting every new line as an unquestionable national triumph. HSR is not a universal panacea, nor is every proposed corridor automatically viable. However, it undeniably creates thousands of jobs across construction, manufacturing, and services.

For decades, India debated whether a developing nation could afford such trains. Committees studied the subject, reports accumulated, and arguments about elitism repeatedly paralyzed decision-making. The world did not wait. Japan pioneered the Shinkansen in 1964; France, Germany, and Spain developed their own iconic networks through the 1970s and 1980s; and eventually, even middle-income nations like Türkiye, Morocco, and Indonesia joined the HSR club.

China is the comparison that stings the most. Its first HSR line opened in 2008, and it has since built a colossal network expanding toward 50,000 kilometres, laying tracks at a staggering rate of nearly 2,500 kilometres per year. While India and China both possess massive populations, sprawling urban hubs, and an enormous demand for passenger transit, their political and economic systems differ, making direct comparisons imperfect. Yet, China demonstrated exactly what sustained policy, rigid standardisation, manufacturing scale, and relentless execution can achieve. While China built, India debated.

The Japanese promise

The decisive announcement came in 2015, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart, Shinzo Abe, proposed the Mumbai-Ahmedabad HSR project and gave it political momentum. The 508-kilometre corridor was estimated at about ₹98,000 crore, with Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) expected to provide roughly 80 per cent of the funding through highly concessional finance. It was a major commitment, backed by the promise of Japanese technology and the Shinkansen’s formidable safety record. The foundation stone was laid in September 2017. For once, India seemed ready to move from aspiration to execution.

The project was never going to be simple, but difficulties are not surprises in a megaproject. They are precisely why planning, risk assessment, and realistic schedules matter. The initial target of opening the line in 2022 proved impossible. Land acquisition in Maharashtra became entangled in political opposition and administrative delays. The pandemic interrupted work and restricted the movement of consultants. Design and construction decisions evolved while deadlines moved further away.

The problem of unforeseen delays continues. For instance, massive tunnel boring machines made by Germany’s Herrenknecht at its Guangzhou facility for the 21-km underground stretch from BKC to Shilphata were held up at a Chinese port without clearance. Originally expected to arrive in late 2024, they were delayed by over a year and were finally released and delivered to Mumbai in March 2026 after high level diplomatic interventions.

Following Modi ji’s visit to Japan in August 2025 and Japanese PM Sanae Takaichi’s visit to India in July 2026, it was expected that the path would become clearer. While the exact details of the outcomes were not put out in the public domain, the mood in the Railway Ministry hinted at a renewed purpose, though the narrative seems to be shifting as India integrates its own systems alongside the Japanese framework.

By the time the project had spent years in preparation and construction, the original estimate had swollen close to ₹2 lakh crore. Officials attributed much of the increase to delays and related factors. The National High-Speed Rail Corporation Limited, responsible for delivery, eventually cut a sorry figure in late 2025 when it was unable to offer a firm, dependable completion date to a Parliamentary Committee. For a railway whose defining promise is speed, this was a painfully apt contradiction: the trains were designed to race, while the project itself crawled.

There is a difference between acknowledging genuine difficulties and allowing them to become a permanent alibi. Land acquisition and the pandemic explain part of the delay; they do not explain every subsequent uncertainty about trains, signalling, procurement and the final operating plan. A project of this scale needs one integrated technical and commercial strategy. Instead, the public narrative increasingly resembled a collection of separate decisions, each announced as if it settled the question, only for another one to reopen it.

When the train became the problem

The most revealing muddle concerned rolling stock. Japan’s manufacturers quoted prices for trains and signalling that Indian Railways considered excessive. Negotiations failed to produce an acceptable arrangement. This should not have been wholly unexpected. The project had chosen a specialised Japanese system, and India’s bargaining position was inevitably constrained by its dependence on the supplier for key elements. A similar deadlock had arisen over Japanese locomotives for the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor, where Indian Railways eventually walked away. The lesson was obvious: technology choice, price, maintenance and long-term dependence must be assessed together, before a project becomes locked into a particular mode. The interest-free loan from Japan was being touted all over but we should have realized that there is no such thing as an interest-free loan!  We should have known that Japan would try to extract a higher price to boost their train industry to make up for the loss of interest. We should have been better prepared for strong negotiations, leaning on the PM’s warm relationship with the Japanese.

Instead, IR began developing an indigenous HSR train for 250 kmph operation and 280 kmph test speed. Indigenous development is a worthy ambition. Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai has decades of experience designing and manufacturing coaches, and it has demonstrated what focused teams can accomplish with the Vande Bharat trainset. That project showed that Indian Railways need not remain merely a buyer of imported technology.

IR, however, rather than placing the design and development responsibility primarily with ICF, assigned it to Bharat Earth Movers Limited (BEML) for the indigenous HSR trains. BEML is an established public-sector manufacturer, but it did not possess ICF’s long record of designing railway coaches across multiple categories. The Vande Bharat Sleeper programme itself took considerable time to progress. Why, then, should a much more demanding HSR train be treated as a routine procurement? The point is not that BEML cannot succeed. It is that capability must be built through a credible development plan, rigorous testing and staged expansion, not assumed into existence by an order. A clear caveat here: Institutional pride is valuable when it motivates competence; it becomes misplaced when it refuses to confront gaps in capability. The subject is very close to my heart, and I have devoted the next blog to it.

These choices raised other questions too. The leap for Indian manufacturers, ICF or BEML, from a train designed for semi-high-speed service to a train capable of reliable operation at 250 kmph is not a trivial one. I would have preferred a stepped approach to 220 kmph and then to 250 kmph. Nevertheless, this die is cast and one hopes it succeeds.

The plan to switch to indigenous development instead of an imported one is welcome, but it would be a happier situation if it happened organically with the support of the government. That it has happened on the rebound, in the false hope that it would make Japan see more reason in respect of the price they offered, does not speak well of how we treat indigenous development. At the same time, giving up the option of the latest technology, albeit very expensive, is also retrograde.

Japan subsequently offered two Shinkansen trains, one E5 and one E3, free of charge for testing and data generation. This gesture was intended to help assess performance under Indian environmental challenges, specifically extreme heat and dust. Yet, the move complicated the narrative rather than resolving it. Soon after, both the Japanese and Indian sides announced that the next-generation E10 series Shinkansen trains, which are currently under development, would be delivered to India between 2031 and 2033. Baffling, right? If India lacked the gumption to procure the existing E5 trains, how could it manage to afford the certainly more expensive E10 models?

That HSR in India would run at 250 kmph for a long time is sealed. After the initial order for two prototypes on BEML, they have been favoured with an order for 16 additional trains in September 26.

A hybrid of two speeds and several systems

The infrastructure is being built for an operating speed of 320 kmph and test speed of 350 kmph. Yet the indigenous trains have been mooted for operation at a lower speed of 250 kmph. A slower first train may be a sensible interim step for indigenous train as a necessity. But building expensive infrastructure and then accepting a lower performance level without a clear rationale would be a costly compromise.

Signalling has created an even stranger puzzle. The Shinkansen system was designed around Japanese trains, control arrangements and operating practices. When the price of the Japanese package proved unacceptable, Indian Railways pursued a European signalling solution, described as a temporary measure that could permit indigenous trains to use the line. A contract for an ETCS Level 2-type system was subsequently awarded to a Siemens-DRA Infracon joint venture, reportedly at a fraction of the Japanese price. That may be a more prudent decision than the rolling stock imbroglio. A competitive, internationally proven alternative is preferable to accepting monopoly pricing simply because it comes from the original partner.

The proposed sequence has, however, raised reasonable questions. If European signalling is installed for indigenous trains, what will be required when Japanese Shinkansen trains eventually arrive? Will systems be replaced, adapted or operated in parallel? Who will bear the cost and responsibility for integration? A seven-year contract period for a fixed signalling project also invites scrutiny when the equipment is meant to support a long-lived railway. These are not objections to innovation. They are questions that should have clear answers before a succession of announcements is presented as a settled plan.

The Mumbai to Ahmedabad HSR(MAHSR) project has shifted into a unique technological hybrid, often referred to in railway circles as a ‘khichdi’  or mixed system, with Japanese Civil and OHE engineering, European (Siemens) European Train Control System (ETCS Level 2) alongside automated train operations (ATO), Japanese Operation Control Centre (OCC) with core infrastructure management systems and indigenous Indian trains.

Use of ETCS level 2 system, instead of the proprietary Japanese DS-ATC, does bring an unintended benefit although It was not the driver at all. This open-standard signalling system allows for interoperability meaning locally manufactured trains can run on the network without being locked into Japanese rolling stock software.

Siemens is tasked with integrating its system into the OCC, with their trackside signalling talking to a command centre structure that follows strict Japanese safety, scheduling, and traffic management philosophies.

This hybrid approach has become a major talking point between Indian and Japanese railway authorities. Japan’s Shinkansen has an unblemished safety record and the Japanese attribute it to it being a strictly integrated, closed-loop package. Trains, tracks, signalling, and command centres are all designed in the same ecosystem to work as a single unit. Our khichdi HSR system  creates an entirely untested system. While some integration of European and Japanese systems has been earlier, for example in Taiwan, a mixed bag of this magnitude is a first in the world. The challenge now is proving that these cross-continental systems can sync flawlessly at speeds of 320 kmph and later up to 350 kmph. If it fails, the cost would be very heavy. If it succeeds, it would be benchmark for future.

The year 2026 witnessed contrasting ‘dual signals’ from Japan regarding India's Mumbai–Ahmedabad HiR corridor. First, former Japanese minister Hideki Makihara publicly attacked Indian leadership, accusing them of ‘sheer recklessness, breaking promises, and prioritizing self-interest during negotiations. This friction primarily stemmed from Tokyo feeling sidelined over technical specifications, specifically India's decision to shift away from an integrated Japanese ecosystem toward an open-standard signalling framework. The Indian government firmly rejected these claims, framing them as a misinformed personal opinion and pointing instead other hurdles.

More recently, IHRA Chairman Masafumi Shukuri acted as a diplomatic counterweight. He strongly defended India's timeline, noting that even Japan could not complete a 500-km HSR line in 10 years today. While Shukuri’s defence appeared to smooth over the bad blood created by Makihara, it carried a strategic caveat. He issued a sharp warning that running a ‘mixed system’, combining India’s indigenous trains and open signalling with future Japanese Shinkansen stock, is unprecedented and may be detrimental to safety. This warning subtly protected Japan’s commercial interests by reminding India that the safest, most reliable solution remains a unified, fully Japanese equipment rollout.

While Shukuri’s assessment of modern Japanese timeline constraints is accurate, the underlying structural comparison reveals significant differences: Democratic and regulatory processes in Japan are far more exhaustive than in India. Land acquisition, strict environmental clearances, neighbourhood noise-mitigation laws, and budgetary checks face intense local and legal scrutiny in Japan. To accurately gauge efficiency, while India cannot emulate China’s authoritarian infrastructure speed, we can look at peer developing economies operating under similar democratic or regulatory frameworks. Nations like Türkiye, Morocco, and Indonesia successfully completed their landmark HSR projects within a 6-to-8-year window.

Government-aided media hype, announcing the future before building the present

The confusion has been magnified by reporting that converts possibilities into promises. In January 2025, a report suggested that Vande Bharat trains could operate on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor before Japanese trains arrived. It described signalling arrangements and partial services with a confidence that seemed to outrun the public evidence. The prospect of using the infrastructure rather than leaving it idle deserved examination. But a proposal, a tender and a confirmed operating plan are three different things. Too often, headlines blurred the distinction, giving readers the impression that dates had been agreed when major technical and delivery questions remained unresolved.

Even as the Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor struggled to settle its own timetable and technology, the list of proposed HSR routes expanded. Corridors linking Delhi with Varanasi and Howrah, Chennai with Bengaluru and Mysuru, Delhi with Chandigarh and Amritsar, and Mumbai with Hyderabad have featured in discussions and announcements. More recently, ambitious visions have included thousands of kilometres of high-speed or dedicated passenger corridors over the coming decades. The latest vision in the source material envisages 7,000 km by around 2039-40 and a much larger network in the longer term. Media blitz declaring balderdash like, ‘Chennai–Bangalore in 90 minutes’ has become so common. In the Budget in February 26, past declarations were simply trashed and seven new HSR corridors were announced: Delhi to Varanasi, Varanasi to Siliguri via Patna, Mumbai to Pune, Pune to Hyderabad, Hyderabad to Bengaluru, Hyderabad to Chennai and Chennai to Bengaluru. It appears that DPRs are being prepared afresh.

There is nothing wrong with planning a national network. Long corridors need integrated land-use planning, demand forecasts, alignment studies, environmental assessment, financing and decisions about stations and connections. But announcing route after route before the first corridor demonstrates a repeatable delivery model risks turning planning into political theatre. If India must build close to 500 km of HSR every year to meet a target, the first question is not how impressive the target sounds. It is whether the institutions can consistently deliver one corridor, learn from it and replicate the process. A project that has taken roughly a decade to reach this stage cannot be treated as evidence that five hundred kilometres a year is already within reach. Nevertheless, one does hope that better sense prevails in envisaging the likely pitfalls and we do reach the ambitious target of building these lines, say, by 2040.

Pride, pragmatism and a way forward

The choice is not between total foreign dependency and instant self-reliance, but between strategic technology acquisition and development. Japan’s Shinkansen is proven but must be commercially defensible, while European alternatives exist for trains or signalling. IR must build domestic competence through its production units. The right solution may vary by component, provided the complete system prioritizes safety, performance, and long-term value.

This requires an integrated program rather than reactive decisions. The project needs a clear rolling-stock strategy with defined roles for interim indigenous trains and a path to 320 kmph operations. Compatibility within the signalling and control architecture must be independently validated. Procurement must be transparent, cost estimates realistic, and public reporting honest. Testing must be thorough, and additional train orders must follow demonstrated performance. Developing multiple domestic manufacturers will encourage competition and prevent monopolies.

The Mumbai to Ahmedabad corridor remains an essential learning platform. Its eventual opening, even if delayed and hybrid, will test India’s capacity to coordinate complex civil works, mixed technologies, and high-level safety operations. Success depends on post-launch performance, reliability, costs, and future scalability, not just running a train.

The latest update from the government indicates that a 50 km stretch between Surat and Bilimora will be opened on August 15, 2027. On the face of it, launching such a brief high-speed section appears nonsensical. However, this initial rollout serves two distinct purposes. It provides the government with immediate positive optics, fulfilling the public desire to revel in the vanity of the country's first operational high-speed rail line. More importantly, it delivers a segment long enough to conduct thorough, live testing of the entire integrated system, including the track, signalling infrastructure, and the high-speed trains themselves.

The ambition was right. The execution has too often been muddled. India needs less triumphalism and more engineering discipline, less announcement and more accountability, less attachment to national or institutional vanity and more willingness to choose the best workable solution. The world’s HSR leaders did not reach their present position by treating a press release as a commissioning certificate.

Perhaps the Bard offers the most appropriate two-faced closing counsel. In The Merry Wives of Windsor, Ford says, "Better three hours too soon than a minute too late." Friar Lawrence, in Romeo and Juliet, warns, "Wisely and slow. They stumble that run fast." India's high speed rail story has managed to demonstrate the hazards of both rushing announcements and moving too slowly on delivery. The answer is not to abandon speed, but to match ambition with preparation and urgency with judgement. The bullet train must eventually do more than look fast on paper. It must run.

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 References:

 

My earlier blogs on our HSR

https://anindecisiveindian.blogspot.com/2025/05/indias-bullet-train-high-speed-higher.html

 

https://anindecisiveindian.blogspot.com/2025/01/bullet-dreams-and-media-acrobatics.html

 

The interview which attracted good views:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V27bTmAFxy8

 

My Hindu BusinessLine article

https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/high-speed-rail-on-a-different-track/article70213765.ece

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