Interview of Retd. General Manager, Integral Coach Factory, Chennai – Dr Sudhanshu Mani

July 30, 2026

In this edition of Stainless Post, Sonal Singh, Head – Corporate Communications, speaks with Retd. General Manager of Integral Coach Factory (ICF), Chennai – Dr Sudhanshu Mani. From his early days as a railway engineer to leading the design and development of India’s first indigenous semi-high-speed train, his journey reflects deep expertise and vision. Long before it became a national symbol of speed and self-reliance, Vande Bharat was an idea he championed from the ground up.

Thoughtful, pragmatic, and fiercely passionate about nation-building through engineering excellence, Mr Sudhanshu Mani offers a perspective that is both deeply rooted in experience and decisively forward-looking. Read this engaging conversation between Sonal Singh from Corporate Communications and Mr Sudhanshu Mani.

Dr Mani, take us to the very beginning, to your roots. You grew up in a family with a parent who was already working in the Indian Railways. So, when did railways cease to become a family tradition and become a call of passion for you?

Okay, I’ll start with a caveat. You would perhaps hear, if you dig a little bit into what goes on about me, there are reels and so on, which say that I was so much into railways and I had a dream from childhood to make a good train for India. That’s why I joined railways. So that’s not the truth at all. It’s very far from the truth. So, I had a very regular childhood. Nothing special. I come from a railway family. My father was posted all over mainly U.P., but later also in Delhi and Bombay. We didn’t particularly belong to a city because my father’s job was transferrable. But my later education was in Lucknow from where I did intermediate, which is ten plus two now. At that stage, in those days, I am talking about ’75. So, even if you had many choices, those choices were not really available. You either went into medical line or engineering or if you’re not good in studies, permit me to say this, commerce or law. Since I was in the maths line, I appeared for engineering examinations. I qualified in IIT but didn’t get a good branch, so I joined IIT Kanpur for a very short while. Three days. Left it, joined IIT which used to be University of Roorkee. It’s not IIT Roorkee. And then there used to be a scheme called SCRA where Railways employed successful candidates for four years training in mechanical engineering and then absorbed them as assistant mechanical engineers. And even in those four years you got a very fat stipend. So, it was very attractive. It’s just that you get wedded to railways. So, I joined the scheme. That college is in Bihar. It’s near Bhagalpur, it’s called Jamalpur. The scheme is no longer there. So that’s how I came into railways. It was strictly a bread-and-butter issue. Not my love for Railways. Yes, because I come from a railway family and travelled in railways a lot, albeit in luxury because we travelled so many times in saloons and so on. But I remember I always used to be at the window and look at India passing you by and the railway stations and how they were made, what kind of people came, their station names and so on. I used to remember them. So yes, I used to love railways, but that was not the reason I joined Railways.

38 years down the line, and you’ve been through so many tough technical postings and a career that culminated as General manager for ICF, Chennai. So, for those of us who are not very well versed with what is it that an ICF does, can you summarise it for them?

So let me first correct you. It’s not really 38 years. It’s 42 years. Because if you count those four years in Jamalpur, that was also railways. And so, Integral Coach Factory, Chennai was established as a dream of Jawaharlal Nehru in early 1950s for India to make railway coaches of current technology. The technology was acquired from a company in Switzerland and what happened was his dream was not matched by any great vision by railway men like me. So, it kept on expanding and doing more and more. As India required more coaches that numbers kept going up, went through many expansions, but it was more of the same, same type of coaches. Some technology was brought in, like the LHB coach technology from Germany. More AC coaches were introduced, but by and large, which I keep saying, if you close your eyes and recall the image of an Indian Railways train, you see the same, you know, box type train, which used to be Gulf red and now it’s blue. Only the colour has changed. But because of its expansions, Integral Coach Factory became in terms of number of coaches, it has turned out from one premises, the biggest factory in the world. When I joined, it had already done nearly 60,000 coaches. Today the number is 80,000. No other factory in the world, not sure about China, but no other factory in the world other than that, has made so many coaches from one premises.

Now coming to Vande Bharat. The train that was made at fraction of a cost compared to its imported equivalent, also made from scratch in 18 months. And you are credited with turning this around in no time. So, take us through that journey, because it must not have been an easy one — convincing all the stakeholders for it, the highs and lows of that journey — walk us through it, please.

So, you know, when I say I didn’t join Railways for that, but I did have that angst. And a dream is with so many engineers, such a large network, such a huge organisation, such a huge budget, when is India going to have an aesthetically superior, technologically advanced, modern, speedier train? That was an angst which remained with me all my service life. I was, let’s say, not senior enough or in the position to do much about it except talking about it. When I joined Integral Coach Factory the first thing that I knew that if I had this dream and this angst, and if I did not do anything about it, heading the arguably the largest factory in the world, then it was not a dream; it was a pipe dream. Then I ran into some great luck – fortune – and that was the staff, engineers, their designers, manufacturers, all these people, having gone through years of transfer of technology in various products, had a dream to build a similar train which would run at 180km/h, will have no engine and so on. A dream perhaps larger than mine. And they had the, if I can call it, the Chutzpah to try to do something new. They were bursting at the seams to do something. All they needed was somebody to come and channelise that energy. And so it became so easy because a very good team was there, ready-made for me. So that made the job easy. The team chose itself not based on any hierarchy. It was based on people who would go beyond the call of duty to do something. Fortune again, got a great team going. Half the battle was won then and there. No major project can ever boast of success in the first go. If it happens, you can always say it was because of good planning and so on, but there has to be a good element of luck. And this is the story, in short.

If I had to ask you for top three advice for all the young engineers who are entering Indian Railways and maybe other industries like ours today, what would be those top three advice?

First thing is, whatever I write today, my videos, my interviews, you will find I am very critical of what goes on in Indian Railways, but I always qualify it by saying that I love Indian Railways. So, first thing, first advice — you must love your work. You must love the people you work with. You must love the organisation you work for, first and foremost. If it is not happening to you and unless it is a serious bread and butter issue; you should quit. Because otherwise you are doing a great disservice to the organisation and to yourself being stuck in a job that you didn’t love. So, number one is, as I said, just love your work, love the people you work with, love the organisation you work for.

Number two. So, all of us have dreams, multiple dreams at times. So don’t be consumed by that dream. I always say there are 3-4 things, which are more important than any dream of yours. Obviously, it’s your family, your friends, your spirit, your health. Keep them in forefront. If they are in good health, if they are good, your work would automatically be good. But never let any dream die. Let it not be extinguished. Let it linger somewhere. A time will come for you to do something about it. And that is the time; be patient, but that is the time that you must give it everything you have. And I stand as evidence because I got to head the largest factory in the world when I was 57 years and seven months old. I had two years and five months left. That was the time Indian Railways afforded me this opportunity to do something about it. And then I got this good team, and then I tried to give everything to it. Just remember the people’s president, APJ Abdul Kalam’s words, beautiful saying when he says that a dream is not the thing that you see in sleep, but a dream is that thing that does not let you sleep. That is the time to give everything that you have.

And since you said three, like all old men, I have many advice. I will say one, something is very important and that is how do you define success? You see, if you ask somebody, what is success? The answer you would get is so you do something, you are engaged into something and there is an outcome of value. And that outcome of value is success. Somebody taught me that that’s not success. If whatever you are doing, if you give it your commitment, your passion, your love, your hard work, your life, you cannot do more. You just cannot do more. So, if you are happy with yourself that you have been able to do this, then you have succeeded. You are already successful. The outcome may not be of value; you may fail in that. But with that kind of commitment and passion, you cannot go on failing. It may sound like a cliche, but it’s the truth.

That is very important not to think of success and value, but to think of the job at hand and give it everything. So, these are the three advice I would give to youngsters.

Now, my last question to you, and it is almost totally removed from Railways. We know that you run an art gallery in Lucknow. So, from Railways to art gallery, and we have also learned some bit on the Safar movement. So how did it pan out? Railways for profession and art for passion. Put the picture together for us.

Life does not equip an engineer. Engineering does not equip somebody to deal with life. Dealing with life is possible only through art and literature. And this is what I believe, because that teaches you so many nuances of life, nuances of human being, nuances of dealing with people. Woh engineering se nahi aa sakta. I had no formal education in art or literature. So, I cultivated it. I was an idiot, I did not understand anything. I would stand next to a painting and understand nothing, especially if it is a contemporary or a modern art or even Picasso. I did not understand anything, but I would stand intelligently and pretend I was understanding something. Then some young lady artist, I will cajole her into coming next to it and explain to me what is the artist trying to say? So, the biggest criminal question in art is to ask the artist, what are you trying to say? Because that is an insult. If you are not able to see what I am trying to say, I am not going to explain it to you. Nevertheless, she would tell you ten things, which you did not see in art. That’s the power of art. Similarly, with literature. You can read it but still not understand it. To understand it, you have to read it many times or take help of translations, interpretations and so on. It is all a very engaging exercise, which to my mind equips you for finer things of life. So, it’s all cultivated interest, nothing natural. I still don’t think I know much about it, but it is very important in life.