Keywords: railway, modernisation, cooperation, challenges.

The idea of a high-speed railway is 89 years old, dating back to 1933 when the first high-speed train was operated in Germany at an operating speed of 99 miles per hour. This was later surpassed by Japan’s Shinkansen or the Bullet Train which began operations in 1964 with an operating speed of 199 miles per hour between Tokyo and Osaka. High-Speed Rail first appeared on the Indian Railway network in 1969. Over the years following liberalisation, the idea of a high-speed railway corridor has started gaining momentum with the first announcement made by Mamata Banerjee in the Railway Budget of 2001. The idea of a high-speed railway was pursued over the years with announcements being made in 2004 and 2008 by the then railway minister Laloo Prasad Yadav. The foundation stone for the first high-speed rail corridor between Mumbai and Ahmedabad was jointly laid by the Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi and Shinzo Abe of Japan in 2017 with a total investment of USD 15 billion with Japan contributing USD 8.8 billion to the project. This has led to the Sino-Japanese rivalry with China exerting its influence on countries such as Indonesia seeking Chinese assistance in establishing high-speed railway connectivity. The following essay aims to understand the role of high-speed railways in influencing the emerging forms of diplomatic relations and the challenges to the expansion of the high-speed network in developing countries with a focus on the Indo-Japanese Cooperation in the railway modernisation using qualitative data which includes primary and secondary sources of data. The primary data includes interviews with policymakers, bureaucrats, politicians and academicians. The secondary data includes books and reports by the ministry of railways.

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