E. Sreedharan: The man who tried to change how India moves

Yet few individuals have altered urban India as profoundly as he has. The label “Metro Man” barely captures the scale of his impact — especially in Delhi, where he didn’t just build a railway system, but helped change how a city thinks about movement, time and public space.

When Sreedharan took charge of the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation in the late 1990s, the daily commute of a typical Delhite was a case study in hardship. The city’s residents squeezed into overcrowded DTC buses with erratic schedules, crawling along accident-prone roads. Getting to work meant exhaustion before the day had begun. For women, it often meant navigating routine harassment in jam-packed buses.

Into this chaos, Sreedharan introduced a transport system defined by punctuality and predictability—qualities then rare in India’s public infrastructure.

Today, the network carries millions daily and has reshaped how distance is measured in the city.

That achievement stands out even more when set against India’s first experiment with urban metro rail. Hobbled by shifting alignments, funding constraints and weak institutional capacity, the pioneering Kolkata Metro—work on which began in the early 1970s—took nearly 12 years to build its first line.

It was the Delhi Metro under Sreedharan that demonstrated what disciplined execution, professional autonomy and sustained political backing could achieve.

He cemented his reputation in the 1990s with the 760-km Konkan Railway line. Sceptics doubted it could be completed given the engineering challenges of carving a route through the Western Ghats. Sreedharan delivered it in seven years flat.

Colleagues describe a man of austere habits and uncompromising standards. At work, he arrived before 9 am, left on time, and expected the same discipline from his teams. Meetings were brief, decisions swift. Crucially, he made it clear that corruption of any kind would not be tolerated.

Away from work, he has often spoken of drawing strength from a daily reading of the Bhagavad Gita.

Equally crucial was the political support he received, particularly from Delhi’s then chief minister Sheila Dikshit, who granted him unusual operational autonomy. In a system often paralysed by bureaucratic friction, the Delhi Metro became a rare example of what happens when political will aligns with professional integrity.

Projects were completed largely on schedule and within budgets. Soon, the model was emulated across the country, with dozens of Indian cities building metro systems to address urban mobility crises.

The metro was meant to reduce car usage and reorient urban travel around public transport. Instead, India’s vehicle population has surged six-fold since the 2000s, worsening congestion. The reasons are as much behavioural as infrastructural. Rising incomes made car ownership aspirational, and many commuters preferred the perceived status of private vehicles over the convenience of mass transit.

The problem was compounded by short-sighted urban planning. Rather than integrating metros with seamless last-mile connectivity using buses, pedestrian pathways and cycling infrastructure, city administrators doubled down on flyovers and road expansion.

The result is a paradox: world-class metro systems that are sometimes underutilized because reaching stations remains cumbersome.

The man who sought to change India’s commuting culture could not, on his own, alter the behaviour of citizens or the thinking of planners.

Yet his achievement endures—in every train that arrives on time, in every commuter who avoids the car-choked chaos above ground. Ultimately, Sreedharan’s story is about both the possibilities and the limits of individual agency in a vast democracy.

He showed that one upright engineer can indeed move a city.