President Pranab Mukherjee today called the Indian Railways an "integrator and unifier" of the country.
Mukherjee said this while talking to a group of 68 probationers of the Indian Railway Service of Engineers (IRSE), 2011-batch, as they called on him at Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Addressing the probationers, the President congratulated them on their success in a very difficult examination.
The President said civil engineers have to play a major role not only in maintaining and upgrading the Indian Railways but also taking it to new heights of one of the largest railway networks in the world.
"Few institutions and organisations could be described as truly pan-Indian like the Indian Railways. Everyday millions of passengers speaking different languages, consuming different types of food, wearing different types of dresses and believing in diverse religions use one common vehicle for transportation. They lose their individual identities and assume one common identity as passengers of the Indian Railways," he said.
"The Indian Railways, thus, plays a major role as an integrator and unifier of this great country," a Rashtrapati Bhavan statement said quoting Mukherjee.
The probationers at present are undergoing training at the Indian Railways Institute of Civil Engineering in Pune.
