Elattuvapil Sreedharan is a retired officer of the Indian Engineering Service and advisor to several Metro projects in India. He is a member of the United Nations’ High Level Advisory Group on Sustainable Transport. Sreedharan is popularly known as the Metro Man for his groundbreaking work in transforming public transport in India, particularly his work with Delhi Metro as well as being behind the development of the Konkan Railways.
Sreedharan, 85, was born in 1932 in Karukaputhur, Madras Presidency, now in Kerala. He has received numerous national and international honours for his work in transforming the way people commute. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2001 and felicitated with the Padma Vibhushan in 2008. He was awarded the French government’s Chevalier de la Légion d’honneur in 2005 and he was also named as one of Asia’s Heroes in 2003 by TIME magazine.
He pursued his higher education at the Victoria College in Palghat. Afterwards, Sreedharan completed a degree in civil engineering from the Government Engineering College, known now as JNTUK, in Kakinada, Andhra Pradesh.
His career started in the academia. He started out as a lecturer of civil engineering at the Government Polytechnic, Kozhikode. He then joined the Bombay Port Trust as an apprentice. Sreedharan then cleared the Indian Engineering Service Exam in 1953 and joined the Southern Railway in December 1954.
Sreedharan moved up the ladder in the Railways due to his ingenious ways of tackling problems and was duly recognised for it. In 1964, after a cyclone washed away a bridge, he completed the restoration work of the bridge in 46 days as against six month target set by the Railways.
Between 1970 and 1975, he was in charge of planning, designing and implementing the Kolkata Metro project. This was one of the most technologically advanced projects undertaken in India in the public transport field. Between 1979 and 1981, he was in charge of the Cochin Shipyard Limited and was instrumental behind its turnaround. He retired from government service in 1990 at the position of Member Engineering, Railway Board and ex-officio Secretary to the Government of India. However, the government kept him on a contract as it felt it needed him.
He then spearheaded the Konkan Railway project which was of a Build-Operate-Transfer model and according to its nature, it is considered one of the most difficult railway projects in the world. He then took up the task of developing the Delhi Metro project. In a span of 16 years, under his leadership, Delhi Metro changed the face of public transport in Delhi and NCR region. It completed sections regularly before target and is one of the handful of Metro projects in the world that have run in profits and have been able to shift massive public from road to Metro. After 2011, he took advisory roles in Kochi Metro, Jaipur Metro, Lucknow Metro, Coimbatore Metro and proposed projects in Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada.
Narendra Modi government chose E Sreedharan to head a committee to lay down standards for metro rail systems in the country, the ‘metro man’ has slammed Prime Minister Modi’s ambitious bullet train project.
A retired Indian Engineering Service (IES) officer, Sreedharan served as the managing director of Delhi Metro from 1995 to 2012.
“Bullet trains will cater only to the elite community. It is highly expensive and beyond the reach of ordinary people. What India needs is a moder clean, safe and fast rail system,” Sreedharan said in an interview to Hindustan Times.
The Japan-backed Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project costing $17 billion is expected to be constructed by August 2022. Modi has called the project crucial for his pet ‘Make in India’ campaign aimed at lifting the share of manufacturing in India’s $2 trillion economy. The government also hopes to generate hundreds of jobs through the train project.
