Sixty of us from every service on the Himalayan trek, and the only thing anyone wanted to know from the IRAS officers was whether the railway really loses money on passengers. We had answers by the summit.
The foundation course trek is a week in the Garhwal Himalaya with officers from every service in the batch. Ours went up the Har Ki Dun valley, sixty of us and a team of guides, with the IRAS contingent numbering exactly four.
On the first evening someone from the IAS asked the question that every IRAS officer is eventually asked: does the railway really lose money on passengers? By the second evening we had a small audience and by the summit we had prepared, from memory, a walk through the passenger and freight cross-subsidy that I am still rather proud of.
What stayed with me is how little the rest of government knows about railway finance, and how interested they are once someone explains it. I have since thought that a short note — the kind we gave at 3,500 metres — would be a useful thing for the association to publish.
Reviewed and approved by the association on 06 Sept 2026