For the first time in many years a railway minister has hiked the fares across all the categories. Railways, in recent times, has always been the stronghold of regional powers be it Nitish Kumar or Laloo Prasad Yadav or Ram Vilas Paswaan or Mamata Bannerjee( The current minister Dinesh Trivedi is an MP from the Trinamool Congress). And
being regional powers that they are, mostly the railway budgets have been used as a means to provide benefits to the state you hail from. A slew of well publicized popular measures (like new trains; sometimes even old trains with new names) and a few big announcements that never see the light of the day has been the trend. The only exception
perhaps was Nitish Kumar who had introduced the TATKAL system as well the initiated the computerized bookings on a large scale. And of course in the midst of all everybody seemed to forget whether the railway tickets are priced adequately enough to sustain any kind of development work, particularly that of safety which has long been talked about but little has been done till date. In that respect the current budget is a great deviation of sorts. Of course, Mamata Bannerjee has threatened withdrawal of support in case of no roll back of the hike in fare with her usual hyperbole." The government rolls back, TMC doesn't". Ultimately given the power equations in the centre
with a heavily weakened Congress post the state elections, it is highly possible that the fare hike might get rolled back. But that doesn't discount the fact that Mr Dinesh Trivedi is a brave man and an astute one too. Perhaps this is the beginning of the change that we all have been looking forward to, where railway ministers stop
treating the railways as their personal property for dolling out freebies and actually try and formulate economically viable action plans that would lead to the railways looking different from what it did when India was still under the British and Mahatma Gandhi was still alive. ( A previous article in the EPS posted last week speaks
about this in detail on how the railways have practically changed very little over the years). Someone had to, at one point, start opposing this syndrome of being populist with the railways. Mr Trivedi has done so. Only time will tell if it gets carried forward.
being regional powers that they are, mostly the railway budgets have been used as a means to provide benefits to the state you hail from. A slew of well publicized popular measures (like new trains; sometimes even old trains with new names) and a few big announcements that never see the light of the day has been the trend. The only exception
perhaps was Nitish Kumar who had introduced the TATKAL system as well the initiated the computerized bookings on a large scale. And of course in the midst of all everybody seemed to forget whether the railway tickets are priced adequately enough to sustain any kind of development work, particularly that of safety which has long been talked about but little has been done till date. In that respect the current budget is a great deviation of sorts. Of course, Mamata Bannerjee has threatened withdrawal of support in case of no roll back of the hike in fare with her usual hyperbole." The government rolls back, TMC doesn't". Ultimately given the power equations in the centre
with a heavily weakened Congress post the state elections, it is highly possible that the fare hike might get rolled back. But that doesn't discount the fact that Mr Dinesh Trivedi is a brave man and an astute one too. Perhaps this is the beginning of the change that we all have been looking forward to, where railway ministers stop
treating the railways as their personal property for dolling out freebies and actually try and formulate economically viable action plans that would lead to the railways looking different from what it did when India was still under the British and Mahatma Gandhi was still alive. ( A previous article in the EPS posted last week speaks
about this in detail on how the railways have practically changed very little over the years). Someone had to, at one point, start opposing this syndrome of being populist with the railways. Mr Trivedi has done so. Only time will tell if it gets carried forward.
