Explainer: Tracking the bullet train, its symbolism and economic reality

INDIA’S bullet train vision, once confined to the Mumbai-Ahmedabad line, is now expanding into a nationwide grid of high-speed corridors. Yet, behind the renderings and rhetoric lies a tangle of rising costs, land disputes and a growing dependence on Japan, raising uneasy questions about whether this ‘Make in India’ dream risks becoming a diplomatic overreach.

At the heart of this story remains the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail (MAHSR), India’s first bullet train corridor spanning 508 km across Maharashtra and Gujarat. Launched with fanfare in 2017 and financed predominantly through a Rs 1.1 lakh crore package, of which nearly 81 per cent is funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the project has become the litmus test for India’s capacity to execute mega infrastructure through foreign partnerships.

Project timeline, expansion

The official deadline now stands at December 2029, with the Gujarat section expected to open by 2027. While work in Gujarat has gathered momentum, Maharashtra’s portion has been repeatedly hobbled by litigation, forest clearances and protests in Palghar and Thane. What was meant to be India’s showcase of engineering prowess has instead underscored how bureaucratic friction and coordination lapses can derail even the most high-profile projects.

Despite the bruising lessons, the government is pressing ahead with a broader high-speed vision. Alongside the Mumbai-Ahmedabad line, the National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) has identified several other corridors under active planning: Delhi-Lucknow-Varanasi (813 km), Delhi-Jaipur-Udaipur-Ahmedabad (872 km), Nagpur-Nasik-Mumbai (767 km), Varanasi-Patna-Howrah (752 km), Delhi-Chandigarh-Ludhiana-Jalandhar-Amritsar (476 km), and Mumbai-Pune-Hyderabad (671 km).

Together, they stretch over 4,800 km, an audacious network promising to link political capitals, industrial clusters and tourism hubs at speeds above 300 kmph.

Moving beyond files

The government calls this the future of Indian mobility. Critics, however, see it as a vision leaping ahead of ground realities.

Most of these new corridors remain on paper, stuck in survey or detailed project report stages, years from breaking ground. Officials admit that the magnitude of land acquisition alone is daunting, with densely populated tracts, farmland resistance and legal disputes threatening to drag timelines indefinitely. Maharashtra’s experience on the MAHSR corridor has forced expensive redesigns, including elevated alignments to avoid inhabited zones and fragile ecosystems. Those same issues now shadow planned routes through Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Telangana.

Inescapable cost escalation

The Mumbai-Ahmedabad line’s budget has already touched Rs 1.1 lakh crore, and adding the proposed corridors could push India’s high-speed rail bill beyond Rs 7 lakh crore. Tokyo’s loans remain generous but conditional, structured with long repayment periods and tied to Japanese contractors, materials and technology. That tether, say economists, has created an imbalance: India receives low-cost credit but at the expense of autonomy in procurement and design. The result is a partnership that often feels less like technology transfer and more like long-term dependency.

Officials insist that Japan’s involvement ensures quality and safety. The Shinkansen model, with its spotless safety record, is cited as proof that India’s collaboration is the right choice. Yet diplomatic episodes, such as reports earlier this year suggesting India had “rejected” Japanese technology, which the Railways Ministry quickly dismissed as fake, highlight the fragility of the arrangement. Behind closed doors, there is growing unease over how much strategic leverage Japan now holds on what was once touted as a wholly Indian dream project.

Meanwhile, the Modi government is trying to turn the narrative towards progress and performance. Weekly reviews, tighter monitoring of land handovers and high-profile Indo-Japan ministerial meetings are designed to project momentum. Milestones like the completion of the Girdharnagar bridge in record time and the launch of tunnelling under Thane Creek are showcased as proof that the project is moving. The government now cites the bullet-train programme as an emblem of ‘New India’s ambition’, claiming it will catalyse local manufacturing and jobs through ancillary units.

During his August visit to Japan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had also met with Indian locomotive pilots receiving training in Japan for the rail project.

Still, scepticism persists. For every gleaming viaduct built, thousands of families await compensation; for every promise of transfer of technology, the dependence on imported components deepens. The tension between political symbolism and economic reality grows sharper as deadlines approach.