Politicians have ruined railways. Be it extending trains to their native states for vote purposes[looks at Lalu] to introducing useless new types of trains[Duronto, Sampark Kranti, Antyodaya, Garib Rath,] half of which are just slight variants of each other. There are so many types of trains that it is hard to expect a normal person to keep track of it. Every rail minister tries to do it to leave their 'legacy'. Oh, and the continuous renaming of trains after one politician or the other. Somebody tell them, that the ordinary person cares about the destination; not the half dozen words long station name[looks at Gomoh and Mughalsarai].
And...
more... some politicians use their power to create additional 'new' stops on existing routes when there is none needed[quite ironical when considers the fact that many routes have gone neglected under IR and are now defunct]. Our mps of trains is constant since the past fifty years. Except for Bhopal Shatabdi and Gatimaan, other trains are stuck at the same old speeds. Heck, some have even gotten slower due to addition of useless halts. When comparing to China's system which started off as a country similar to ours, Indian Railway has failed in a big way.
Looking at the improvements that Gadkari is doing at the road front[just look at the daily road created number], Railways has lagged. With creation of expressways, Railways is lagging and will become the second choice for people. It kinda has happened in some places. For over two decades, Shatabdi was the fastest means of transportation b/w Lucknow and Delhi and the defacto way to traverse b/w these two cities. With the building of Agra Express way and Yamuna Expressway, even an ordinary bus now trumps the Shatabdi in running time. New road routes were built and existing ones speeded up. But Shatabdi still takes the same time as before. If Railways wanted, they could have made LJN CNB route atleast somewhat faster, but in over half a century, they didn't. Same goes for the CNB NDLS route. No one cares for the trains, no one cares for the Railways. That's the sad reality.