An analysis of Indian Railways contribution towards employment generation

The service sector covers a wide array of activities ranging from services provided by the most sophisticated sector like telecommunications to simple services, highly capital intensive activities like civil aviation and shipping to employment-oriented activities like tourism and housing, infrastructure related activities like railways, roadways, and ports to social sector related activities like health and education.

Indian Railways is one of the largest systems in the world under single management. It is also one of the very few railway systems in the world generating operating surpluses. With a modest beginning in India from 1853, the Indian Railways has emerged today as the main vehicle for socio-economic development of the country.

Indian railways is contributing significantly to the employment generation. One of the main objectives of railway vision 2020 is also to generate large scale productive employment. Indian railway is a labour intensive industry having a workforce of over 13.6 lakhs employees. Indian railway is one of the largest employers not only in India but also in the world.

The workforce of Indian railway is a varied mass of people from the gang man at one end to chairman of railway board at apex level. Railway employees are working in various categories in the zonal railway and production units. There are around 700 categories of staff divided into 4 groups as A B C and D assigned according to working responsibilities. The present study makes an attempt to highlight the contribution of Indian railways towards employment generation. The study also concentrates on Railways share in India's G.D.P. This study gives a comparative analysis of employment generation by different sectors of the economy and highlights the importance of Indian railways among all other employers.