इस मंज़िल पर मिलने वाले, उस मंज़िल पर दोस्त बन जाते हैं

The major problem with IR now is they get less revenue since people are not travelling in Railways like they did before.
SR has resulted in both loss in passengers as well as revenue as per SR GM Independence Speech.
When a country grows we should see railways growing but its on -ve growth for the past few years.
On the other hand Airways...
more...

is growing at 20+%.
Reason: Normal 3AC/2AC fare is more or less equal to Airfare when booked 2+ weeks in advance on normal seasons. You can check MAS-Cochin/TVC and compare then flight fare and 3AC/2AC fare.
Now with more allocation to PT/CK, Suvidha, direct and indirect fare hike, slow speed people have started looking for alternatives.
Take a pink book before 2 - 3 years and see how much Capital/DEP funds allocated for projects and compare the same with last two years. You can find the difference. Railways growth is -ve due to only increasing the fare.
The main USP for railways was only fare 5 years ago. Now nothing other than Suburban, UR, 2S and to some extent to normal SL class ticket.
Already trains are running with vacant berths and this would ensure more vacant berths in near future.
With this RM is lending loans at 9.5%. How he can repay?
Also Railways don't have money even for maintenance. You would have heard 100+ TSR in Kerala. Why the required maintenance was not done by the railways on time. All I heard is fund crunch.
Operations wise IR is seeing one of its worst time and don't know where SP will take IR. He might do all these hikes till all pax except UR and Suburban move away from railways to other mode of transport.