Rail budget feels the election pressure
By Upendra Prasad
Railway Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal was seen under the pressure of impending Legislative Assemblies and Lok Sabha elections, while presenting his maiden Rail Budget, but unfortunately he failed to enthuse the people of India with its provisions. Elections will be held in many states of the countries in coming months and Lok Sabha election is also due in 2014. This is perhaps the last Rail Budget of UPA2 government, which may most probably go for only a vote on account next year, if Lok Sabha election is held on its due date. That is the reason, why RM was expected to present a populist budget.
But before the budget he was giving hints that he may have been forced to raise the railway fares to meet the cost of enhanced high speed diesel prices and also raised electricity charge. It has been a political strategy to create panic among the people before budget and do the contrary, so that public sentiments turn towards the government. Mr. Bansal has announced that there will be no increase in the railway fares, but what he meant by that was related to base fares of the journey. We know that base fare and actual fare are not always the same. On base fare, several other charges are levied and the Minister has raised those charges, which will in effect raise the railway fares.
That is why Mr Bansal was not completely wrong, when he was hinting at the fare rise, when he was preparing his budget. Similarly, he was not completely true, when he said that rail fares have not been raised. In fact Lalu was the first to use this kind of fare increase. In one budget after another Lalu, during 2004- 09 went on to claim that he was not raising rail fares, but he was actually doing the just opposite. He was converting even normal Express Trains as super fast trains and raising the super fast surcharge on customers. He was raising the seats under Tatkal schemes and at the same time, increasing the Tatkal charges. He had even raised the sleeper reservation charges keeping the base fare intact.
It seems that Mr Bansal has copied the scheme of Lalu Prasad for raising the revenue on account of fares, while keeping the passenger fare charge unchanged. Lalu had one more advantage, which is not available to Mr Bansal. During his time, the number of coaches in all trains were raised sufficiently and it resulted into more passengers journeying from the same train. This provided extra revenues to the Railways and also helped more and more passengers to travel. In most of the country, during most of the months of the year, demand for travels is always much more than the seat availability. So it was a master stroke to raise the revenue of the Railway by just increasing the coaches of the train, while keeping the fares unchanged. Now trains have reached their saturation point so far number of coaches are concerned and Mr Bansal does not have such opportunity to earn more revenue for the railways. But he has imitated Lalu Yadav, while keeping the base price of the fare unchanged and increasing the other charges. In his speech he has not specifically state the quantum of increase of such charges, so it will be known later on how much costlier the rail fare is going to be.
Making announcement for new railway projects, new railway lines and new trains is another way for making the budget popular. Since there is huge demand for the rail travel almost throughout the country, so the new trains are always welcome by the people of the area, where they are introduced. The Minister has himself said that during last 12 years, the number of trains running the track has increased by more than 50 percent. He too has made contribution in it by announcing 94 trains belonging to four categories. He has taken into account those regions of India, where Congress stake is high. He has even taken care of the interests of other UPA allies too. And in this process East India has been neglected. This year, we have seen westward shift in project announcement. Rajasthan, Punjab, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, Rai Bareli, Madhya Pradesh and many places of South India figured repeatedly in the budget speech of Mr Bansal, but Bihar and Bengal did not find much mention. This is due to the political and electoral factors, because in these two east Indian states, Congress does not have much at stake. It is not a serious contender for more seats in these two states and where it has stake, has been given more importance, while making the budget.
The Railway Minister has also made announcement of giving job to around 1 lakh 36 thousand Indian youth. For last many years, tests for their recruitments are going on, and the youth are waiting for the result. This being the Election Year, results of many tests undertaken during last 4-5 years will be declared and Congress will try to take credit for giving jobs to youth on a huge scale in the railway. This is a good news for those, who are waiting for the results.
In preparing the budget and his speech, Mr Bansal did not pay much attention on the black marketing of the railway tickets. There is a strong ring of such racketeers and the action taken by the railways against them have not proved very successful. Such network has come into existence only after the privatization of train ticketing and giving license to private agents for booking the tickets. One thing Railway Minister could have done was the announcement to do away with such agents. This could have attracted the public for the present rail budget. Budget has only been introduced, it has to be debated and passed. We can expect Mr Bansal to deliver, where he has failed. (IPA Service)