A tale of two sectors: Aviation soars while railways crawl

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Demat accounts more than trebled over the covid period, even as mutual funds drew large inflows. The trouble with the hypothesis of asset-earned holidays is that it’s unclear if we have had a wide enough dispersal of sizeable gains. Retail investors with shares worth over ₹1 crore, for example, can possibly envision dividends (and/or notional capital gains) paying for a family holiday, but it is hard to picture new investors in the same league.

As beginners, their holdings are probably modest and their reliance on shares to fund lifestyle needs is low. And the limits of an all-India upswell in vacations are exposed by other data on inter-city traffic. For every air traveller, we have 20 railway passengers on non-suburban trains.

By current projections, Indian Railways can expect to carry 2,940 million travellers in 2023-24, a figure that’s more than last year’s total but still starkly below (by several hundred million) its pre-pandemic high. This slow revival offers a reality check on how our multitudes are faring. There are ample signs that India’s experience economy is in for an upper-end bonanza driven by a large consumer cohort with a favourably inclined psychographic profile.

Aviation will surely make the most of it. But our lumbering railway recovery evokes one of Premchand’s classic short stories in Hindi. Titled Nasha, or intoxication, it’s about the high of travelling on a fancy ticket for the first time and a sudden descent to reality.