There was a collective sigh of relief from commuters as Union railway minister Suresh Prabhu shied away from hiking passenger fares even though he lost Rs 30,000 crore in subsidising passenger fares. And freight tariffs, one of the main sources of income for the railways, were also left unchanged. But there is no certainty that both these would not be hiked in a few months, as it happened in the last Budget in the case of passenger fares.
For freight, he is exploring long-term tariffs. Finances will be generated through non-tariff means, including partnering with global firms, market borrowings, using the public-private partnership mode for building 400 new stations, and creating a new fund to finance the 44 new projects which will cost Rs 93,000 crore.
Overall it was a please-all budget that even took care of needs of children and changing facilities for babies, increased the number of lower berths for senior citizens and set up a 24x7 helpline for women, provided e-catering so that passengers have the cuisine of their choice, vending machines in coaches and bar-coded tickets at stations. His focus seems to be on expanding all existing amenities including increasing the 2,800 km of rail tracks and making the journey more exciting, convenient and pleasant with more wi-fi facilities and entertainment via FM Radio.
Whilst all this is welcome, passengers are more keen to see security and safety strengthened (45 per cent of all accidents on the tracks are due to derailment), trains arriving on time, particularly for milk vendors and others who have to provide services to other destinations.
Furthering the Swachchh Bharat initiative, there will be 17,000 bio-toilets by the end of 2016 and passengers can SMS “clean my coach” requests. However, this will be nullified unless he works out a monitoring system to see that passengers also maintain cleanliness. He could arrange for the monitoring of two or three compartments and penalise culprits heavily so that the message goes around.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had in January flagged off the swanky Mahanama Express between Varanasi and Delhi; within a week the compartments were filthy with litter and the fancy washbasins were disfigured. Even the top of a tap was stolen. Innovative methods will have to be found to impose cleanliness.
Mr Modi’s vision is of the railways as an engine of growth and employment-generation. Mr Prabhu has talked of generating nine crore man-days of employment in 2017-18 and 14 crore man-days the year after that, but much more needs doing if it is to be an engine of growth.
Mr Prabhu has laid out a road map for this growth but the sting in the tail will be in implementation and how soon he can expedite decision-making. It is a sorry state of affairs that he has been waiting for a year for the Union Cabinet’s nod for a major project in Mumbai.
