Orient Express

John L. Flannery, the President and CEO of GE India was smiling in Chennai late February.  I doubt if the smile had anything to do with having to accept a pointless award made-up by the Indo-US Chamber of Commerce to honor GE's role in Indo-US cooperation. But he certainly seems to have his reasons. The central cabinet has just approved a multi-billion dollar proposal for GE to manufacture diesel locomotives for the Indian Railways.

It all sounds swell until you realize that GE-USA has recently signed a preliminary agreement with China for building high-speed electric locomotives where China will be licensing the latest technology for building high-speed electric engines. While GE is claimed to be the world leader in diesel locomotives, the fastest trains in the US -  the Acela Express, powered by GE engines - with a purported maximum speed of 150 mph (240 kmph), typically averages an underwhelming  80 mph (130kmph). Just to put things in perspective the high-speed trains running on electric engines that connect provincial capitals in China are operating at speeds averaging more than 200 mph (320 kph).

That's a long way from the 19th century when the Chinese sweat, muscle and tears were shipped to California to help build the western railroads to the 21st century licensing offer from the land where you cant really 'google' the meaning for intellectual property.  A fitting completion of the Karmic circle drawn with indelible capitalist ink.

Perhaps somebody should remind the Indian railway minister Ms. Mamta Banerjee that the distance between New Delhi and Beijing is only around 2400 miles compared to 7,300 miles between the Indian capital and GE corporate headquarters in Fairfield, CT.  In abstraction, that would be 12 days to Beijing powered by Chinese electric engine compared to 90 days to Connecticut in a GE locomotive.

Surely we all know who the winners are going to be in this multi billion dollar deal between GE and Indian Railways ; after all GE could use a small share of those handsome profits to seek oriental wisdom on magnetic levitation.

New York Times article on China bringing high-speed rail expertise to US

Economic Times article on GE and Indian Railways

Comments

[hawkeye]

dei ganesh,

blogu sooper. nalla ezhuthara nee po. lane avenue maanatha kaapathara