Beds are standard because Indian trains are excruciatingly slow. An "express" train is one that manages 36 km/h (!) excluding stops, while a "superfast" blazes

Beds are standard because Indian trains are excruciatingly slow. An "express" train is one that manages 36 km/h (!) excluding stops, while a "superfast" blazes along at 55 km/h. Not a single train in the country cracks 100 km/h as an average operating speed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Express_trains_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Express_trains_in_India The Chinese train in the article is thus literally 10x faster than an Indian express. There's finally some work happening on India's first bullet train, Mumbai to Ahmedabad, but even the most optimistic projections don't see it open before 2023.