The Vande Bharat (“Salute to India”) express train has glided out of Gujarat’s state capital Ahmedabad on the journey south to Mumbai, and it is picking up speed. A lighting display at the car’s head shows the train surpassing 120kph — a heady clip in an Indian railways context — minutes after leaving the station.
Designed, engineered, and built locally, the train is a showcase project for the “Make in India” industrial policy of Narendra Modi’s nationalist government, which aims to build indigenous capacity in everything from microchips to combat helicopters, using local knowhow and talent while leveraging strategic partnerships with foreign companies.
“We are trying to make this 100 per cent indigenous by using technology partners and manufacturing in India itself,” says Saurabh Singh, a senior coach and depot officer with the state railways company in Ahmedabad. “The production is indigenous, and the design is indigenous — but it has been designed with an eye to other trains across the globe.”
With its sharp-nosed front and smooth flatline profile, the Vande Bharat would be nothing special in Germany, Japan or China, India’s geopolitical rival and home of the world’s largest national network of high-speed trains.
But many of its features are novel in India, including technology that captures some of the energy trains generate when braking and feeds it back to the power grid.
The Vande Bharat’s rolling stock and tracks are for now designed to withstand speeds of up to 160km an hour — nowhere near the 200km an hour or more that high-speed bullet trains reach. (Indian officials call the Vande Bharat “semi-high speed”).
However, these speeds are unusual in India and several have been involved in collisions with cattle or buffaloes. Online commenters have jumped in, recasting the mishaps as metaphors for the new India colliding with the old. Officials are building fences on some of the routes.
The Vande Bharat is proving popular with passengers, who are filling up the trains after a barrage of patriotic government PR. Modi flagged off one of the first expresses from Bengaluru in November. There are now seven running — the latest was inaugurated in Kolkata at the end of December — and more are planned.
“I had heard about it on the news channels,” says Vinay Prabhankar, 28, a civil engineer who rode the train between Ahmedabad and Gujarat’s second city Surat one recent afternoon. “I think it started in the run-up to independence day”, when India marked its 75th anniversary of nationhood in August.
Indian engineers are renowned for designing software, heavy machinery, pharmaceuticals and other products for the world market. The government is now trying to parlay some of this private-sector expertise in local industries, including less efficient sectors such as railways.
The train is an exemplar of India’s industrial model, in which it is following a much lower-cost, but arguably more pragmatic version of China’s economic take-off in recent decades, in which building railways played a role.
“The prime minister gave us a challenge: that we should have a world-class train that should be designed in India and manufactured in India,” says Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s railways and information technology minister. He says the engineers met that challenge, and India now hopes the train will become a “major export product”.
In a speech marking India’s independence day in 2021, Modi promised to “connect every corner of the country” with 75 Vande Bharat trains. New Delhi is also overhauling some of IR’s Victorian era railway stations, level crossings, and other colonial legacy infrastructure along the network.
Shubham Rai, 32, a computer professional and frequent traveller between Ahmedabad and Mumbai, says he took a selfie the first time he got on the train.
He is now on his second trip, and says: “I am getting used to it.” He adds that he thinks “it will be nice to have more of this train on other routes too. It will save people so much time.”
Additional reporting by Jyotsna Singh