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Laloo Prasad Yadav is now credited with engineering the financial turnaround of the Indian Railways, which was on the verge of bankruptcy.

What makes his performance commendable is that he left passenger fares untouched and found out other revenue streams for railways to make it a cash cow. When Lalu took over, the Indian Railways was a loss-making organization. The Rakesh Mohan Committee (headed by Rakesh Mohan, secretary, department of economic affairs) had termed it a 'white elephant' and predicted that it was destined to hit Rs 61,000 crore (Rs 610 billion) in bankruptcy by 2015. Defying all these predictions, the Railways , under Lalu , booked an unprecedented surplus of 110 billion rupees (2.47 billion dollars) and he announced this turnaround during his Budget-Speech-06-07.

An impressed Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad is studying the Indian Railways turnaround story to make it a case study for its students. Meanwhile, many foreign embassies and universities like the Harvard and HEC Management School, France have sought Laoo's bio-data to know more about him. It is reported that the Indian government has been inundated with requests from embassies and high commissions asking for Lalu's bio-data, as well as the possibility of a visit, ever since he became a minister in the central government.