The Railway Budget for the Year 2010-2011 was presented yesterday once again raised more questions than answered them. Firstly, the basic question that has been raised in so many quarters so many times is : Need we have a separate Rail Budget? It makes greater sense to make it part of the General Budget. The rail portfolio is considered to be a plum one by the politicians and every Minister who headed and heads this, considered it to be his or her fiefdom. Every Railway Minister used the ministry to achieve the narrow ends of promoting his her state at the cost of others and in the process the commercial prudence of the Indian Railways suffered most.
Rail Budget and Promises
On this particular day the incumbent of the ministry uses this occasion to make a series of promises which are never meant to be kept. Quite farcically new ones are made with the full knowledge that the earlier ones are lying pending. Indian Railways, one of the biggest in the world ,needs professionalism of the highest kind and its affairs are too complex to be left to politicians.
Indian Rail and Money
Indian Railway is in real financial mess. With all the talk of cash surplus by the predecessor of Mamata Banerjee, Lalu Prasad Yadav, the truth is that a substantial chunk of the railway revenue goes to meet salary bills of the rail employees and leaving very little for overall development of the Indian Railways thus forcing it to seek budgetary support. The picture would look more pathetic when one finds that it lacks funds to replace even more than 150 years old aging rolling stock and once Lalu Prasad even dreamt of running bullet trains!
Rail Budget - 2010
The Railway Minister's budget 2010 looks more like a comprehensive social welfare program. She envisions running schools, colleges, medical colleges and what not! One also fails how she would mobilize resources for her grandiose Utopian schemes. The railways have not increased passenger fares for the last seven years. On the top of it freight tariff rates have been proposed to be reduced. And the intention behind effecting such a reduction is not at clear. The Indian Railways is facing fierce competition from the private players and it total share in both passenger and freight traffic have been shrinking over the years. She has propounded the idea of "PPP" which look very appealing on paper. It is worth noting that such a model is very difficult to work given the priorities of the respective parties and their divergent goals. No private enterprise would be interested in projects in which returns are uncertain and unremunerative.
The Indian Railways badly needs the stewardship of a far-sighted person to lift itself from its present morass if it has to take its due place in the scheme of things of the 21st Century.
