BRIEF was engaged by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) to execute the beneficiary and stakeholder survey for the Theme-Based Audit on Multimodal Transport and Logistics Initiatives (MMTAL) in Indian Railways, conducted for the Office of the Principal Director of Audit, Railway, Mumbai (Comptroller and Auditor General of India).BRIEF carried out the primary fieldwork underpinning the audit’s assessment of how effectively Indian Railways’ multimodal and rail-linked freight initiatives are serving their intended users. The survey was designed to capture structured inputs on cost and efficiency, operational challenges, infrastructure and connectivity gaps, digital systems, and regulatory processes – feeding directly into the audit’s evaluation of the freight ecosystem and the ease of doing business in rail freight.

BRIEF completed the survey across seven strategically selected locations – Delhi, Mumbai, Kandla (Deendayal Port), Faridabad, Aurangabad (Daulatabad ICD), Manmad (the Nashik–Lasalgaon belt), and Kolkata. The fieldwork engaged a deliberately diverse stakeholder base with a particular focus on MSMEs, distinguishing between current rail users and non-users to surface adoption barriers, alongside logistics service providers and key industry associations.

The survey translated stakeholder experience into a structured, scored evidence base across the audit’s key themes – booking, scheduling and digital tracking; wagon and rake availability and terminal experience; cost and connectivity; and transit-time variability – complemented by qualitative observations gathered directly from commodity associations. The findings quantified both the appeal and the friction points of rail freight: a clear long-haul cost advantage (with a large majority of users finding rail cheaper than road) set against high first- and last-mile and ancillary costs, low confidence in digital tracking systems, peak-season rake shortages, terminal congestion and infrastructure bottlenecks, and significant transit-time unpredictability driven by en-route delays, fitness-examination constraints, and locomotive scheduling priorities. By distinguishing user from non-user perceptions and grounding each theme in stakeholder-reported scores and operational detail, BRIEF’s fieldwork gave NCAER and the Railway Audit office a robust, on-the-ground basis for assessing the performance of multimodal logistics initiatives and identifying the systemic barriers limiting a shift of freight to rail.