History of rail transport in India

The history of rail transport in India began in the mid-nineteenth century.

Prior to 1850, there were no railway lines in the country. This changed with the first railway in 1853. Railways were gradually developed, for a short while by the British East India Company and subsequently by the Colonial British Government, primarily to transport troops for their numerous wars, and secondly to transport cotton for export to mills in UK. Transport of Indian passengers received little interest till 1947 when India got freedom and started to develop railways in a more judicious manner.

By 1929, there were 66,000 km (41,000 mi) of railway lines serving most of the districts in the country. At that point of time, the railways represented a capital value of some £687 million, and carried over 620 million passengers and approximately 90 million tons of goods a year. The railways in India were a group of privately owned companies, mostly with British shareholders and whose profits invariably returned to Britain. The military engineers of the East India Company, later of the British Indian Army, contributed to the birth and growth of the railways which gradually became the responsibility of civilian technocrats and engineers. However, construction and operation of rail transportation in the North West Frontier Province and in foreign nations during war or for military purposes was the responsibility of the military engineers.

While described by some as an example of the benefits of British colonialism, scholars such as Shashi Tharoor and Bipan Chandra describe the construction and operation of railways in India, initially by the British East India Company and subsequently by British companies hand in glove with the British colonial government, as one of the prime examples of British colonial loot. For example, companies were encouraged to overspend on such construction by the high rates of returns that had been guaranteed to British shareholders of these so-called Indian railway companies often based in London. "...each mile of Indian railway construction in the 1850s and 1860s cost an average of £18,000, as against the dollar equivalent of £2,000 at the same time in the US." The extra costs were claimed from Indian people through added taxes and revenues.

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