GIPE-PUNE-OIIOI2 - DSpace@GIPE

224 RATIO~AUZATION IN INDIAN BUSlNESS ENTERPRISE
among the Indian people in certain branches of industrial
.endeavour.. 4
The railways, as the most conspicuous embodiment
.of industrial revolution and modern industry i~, India, can
.also be cited in evidence of the w'orld~wide current
tendencies in rationalization. And l~ere we notice both
:the fusion~amalgamation~concentl'ation as well as the
.technical uptodatization elements of the rationalization
.complex. For a long time in India as in Eur~America the
,organizational question regarding railways was being:
fought on the item U public," "national " or •• state ••
.as contrasted with private, non~official or company
management. The question of management by the state
,or by companies involved ultimately of course problems of
economy and efficiency. And in this regard rationaliza.­
.tion on a large scale may be· said to have been introduced
for the first time in 1905 when the Railway Board was
.established as an organ ,of the Supreme Government of
India. The statalization has been advancing since then
.steadily, and the Railway Board of to~day, reorganized as
it is on the recommendations of -the Acworth Railway
.committee (1920~21), represents not only the "nationaliza~
lion " or public ownership~management principle in a
more prominent form but also the unifying, centralizing
and consolidating tendencies 'in the rationalization process.
Seventy per cent of the railways are at present state~owtied
and forty percent state~managed. And it is in keeping.
with the nationalization~cum~rationalization idea tbat the
great railway amalgamations· of 1925 were consummated.
The fusion '(4,011 miles) of the East Indian Railway with'
4 Indian Year Book. (Bombay); 1929, pp. 524-527.