TGSRTC's Rs 5k-crore accumulated losses still haunt despite surpluses

There is a big bus company in the Indian state of Telangana called TGSRTC.

For many years, it lost a lot of money, and those old losses added up to nearly 5,000 crore rupees.

That is a huge pile of debt that the company still has to deal with.

But in the last three years, the company has started to make money again.

It made more profit each year, and its newest annual surplus was about 1,059 crore rupees.

The change happened because many more people started riding the buses.

A special program called Mahalakshmi lets women ride buses for free, and the government pays the company back for those rides.

Because of this, the buses went from about 67 per cent full to nearly 98 per cent full.

Women have taken more than 320 crore free bus trips and saved a lot of money.

Even though the company is doing better now, it still must work through its old losses from past years, and it still has big expenses like buying new buses and paying staff.