Shiban Khaibri
After a long period of 17 years, a Congress Railway Minister got an opportunity to present this year’s Railway Budget and had virtually no constraints of any coalition compulsions or any type of likelihood of facing any embarrassment like Dinesh Trivedi who attempted to do a departure from not following the unwritten convention thrust on Indian Railways of treating vote bank considerations sacrosanct than pure economic ones. We got this year’s budget belying expectations of addressing the main issues and problems faced by the Railways to make it a viable economic giant to contribute to the country’s GDP at least to the extent of over 2%.
The Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh calls it a “reformist budget presenting a realistic financial picture of the Railways.” “The alibi of a weak economy is totally untenable”, Yashwant Sinha of the BJP holds the view that “it is a weak , ineffective and lifeless budget”. Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party both extending support to the UPA government “just to keep communal forces out” are highly critical of this budget as Mulayam Singh calls it a “worst and the most hopeless budget” and Mayavati Ji slamming the budget calling it “disappointing, anti poor and anti middle class”. TMC Chief and West Bengal CM Mamta Bannerji called it “anti Bengal”. Even the NCP Chief Sharad Pawar , an ally of the UPA 2, is reported to be unhappy with this budget. The Railway Minister has not directly increased the passenger fares but indirectly by hiking reservation and Tatkal charges due to which an increase of Rs.10 to Rs.50 and Rs.25 to Rs. 140 respectively shall have to be borne by the traveling public. This move has been described as “back door entry ” by the CM of Bihar and ex- Railway Minister Nitish Kumar.The Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal has vindicated the stand of his predecessor Dinesh Trivedi by adopting the element of FAC or the Fuel Adjustment Component or linking the passenger fares and freights with the cost of the diesel going up or down depending upon the (International) market prices. The revision in fares shall be twice in a year in either direction commensurate with the fuel costs. Dinesh Trivedi had attempted to bring in one more element of dynamism in the form of an Autonomous Rail Traffic Authority (ARTA) which Pawan Bansal has not considered about in this budget.
There are, however, some positive signs reflected in the budget largely in the form of assumptions, estimates and calculations. The operating ratio of 88.8% is hoped to bring down by 1% to 87.8%. An ambitious plan outlay of Rs. 63363 crores is envisaged for the current fiscal. Growth in traveling passengers is expected to reach at 5.2%. A 500 km new lines and doubling of 750 kms lines is targeted for the financial year whereas 67 new Express and 26 passenger trains are proposed to be introduced. The state of Jammu and Kashmir is set to get train up to the famous Holy town of Katra along with issuing of Yatri slips at the booking windows itself to the passengers. Also looking to the ever increasing traffic, two new trains for Katra and two for Jammu station respectively are proposed to be introduced. Out of these two shall be on weekly, one bi-weekly and the fourth one on six days’ a week basis. Traveling on common rail bus ticket facility for tourist passengers for the state is also proposed. However, to overcome massive unemployment in the state, the expectations of setting up of a coach factory in the state has not been considered. E- Ticketing through mobile phones is also proposed in the budget. Feeling of the touch of “Anubhuti” in Shatabadi and “Rajdhani” trains with ambience and better facilities is proposed.
On the employment front, as the national carrier is the biggest single employer, it is proposed to engage as many as 1.52 lac persons in the employment in Railways and a number of 47000 eligible persons from the weaker sections too to be employed. Aadhar and NREGA are expected to be associated with the Railways , the former proposed to be used for many passenger related services while the latter to ensure getting productive output of work. Railway safety fund is put at a mere Rs. 2000 crores. Just 17 new railway bridges are decided to be built .
On challenging citadels of productive and competitive considerations, the budget has nothing to offer. On ensuring safety , it is proposing to eliminate 10790 level crossings during the period of 12th plan, setting up a target of zero accidents. Only after witnessing the recent tragedy at Allahabad Railway station due to a gulf between the numbers of additional trains decided to run and the actual (less than half) on the world famous Kumbh Festival concluded recently, the Minister has proposed to run additional trains on pilgrim routes. A depressing non performance of the Railways has been its inability to keep up the promises of the new projects going . There is a lot of skepticism on seeing that some new projects are proposed to be set up while there are as many as more than 350 projects pending for years together with work on them going with less than at the snail’s speed involving nearly Rs.29540 crores. Choosing of those projects only which are highly viable and need based can be taken with fixed time frame work and uneconomic ones need to be discarded. The basic requirements of the traveling public is , to start with, the improvement in the condition of the railway stations about which again perhaps due to the paucity of resources, only 60 stations are proposed to get a face lift as ‘Aadarsh stations” while as much as Rs.100 crores has been proposed for three stations of Delhi alone. There are no steps to discourage non passenger overcrowding in the stations or other measures to keep stations and in particular platforms free from non passenger crowds. Sanitation, proper lighting, drinking water facility at all stations, metro, urban, rural should have been the focus of this budget.
De-politicizing of the railways afflicting it for the last more than two decades, is the need of the hour of this veritable major catalyst of overall inclusive growth of the economy. There is no tangible plan for decongesting of routes. Modernity measures to be brought in the IR are no where to be seen and hopes of newer and fastest facilities like bullet trains or very high speed trains are feared to remain only dreams in the near future because track development and building is highly capital intensive and there are no cogent and foolproof measures towards resource mobilization. The whooping losses of Rs.24600 crores are feared to remain there in the operations. When new projects seem to be promises only, wherefrom the cost of additional new trains proposed to be run can be met? The budget seems to have failed to leverage private investment. There is the need to float bonds intensively to mop resources. Revenues are expected to fall short of the expectations to the tune of Rs.6950 crores. Wastages and ostentatious expenditures need to be avoided in the words of Railway Minister that “money saved is money earned”. 5.8% increase in freight charges may net an additional Rs. 4200 crores annually as against Rs. 483 crores similarly on passenger (reservation) fare hike. The freight hike is bound to set in inflationary spiral as railways carry the basic items like dal, rice, Aatta, edible oil, pulses, cement etc. and the common man is bound to suffer even though freight movement earns the highest revenue for the Railways. There are series of criticism on other counts too , the fiscal being an election preparatory one, that states like Bihar, Gujarat, MP, Chhatisgarh and even Uttar Pradesh were ignored in this budget. Pawan Kumar Bansal has not attempted to go in for a paradigm shift but cleverly done a camouflage the fare hikes. It has not come up to the expectations of ensuring a blend of economic viability and social responsibility to make a premise to proceed towards a generation change rather than mere be concerned about only political considerations.
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