Manpower cost of Indian railways is astronomically high to the tune of about 65-70% of total revenue which cannot be sustained in long run. Some of the major steps take so far to tame this problem are
(1) Replacement of family pension by new pension scheme for employees .
(2) Increased efforts to increase non fare revenue- advertisement, commercial exploitation of Rly stations
(3)...
more... Reduction of manpower (from 17lacs to about 13 lacs at present) by out sourcing of non core activities like station cleaning
(4) Introduction of Flexifares, Premium tatkal. special fare trains
(5) Private investment in Railway stations for commercial development (excluding Rly operations), Luxury tourist trains
-
and now planning to
give marketing of regular premium trains to pvt hands,
corporatisation of Rly production units.