Parul Chhaparia and K.A.Badarinath
Financial Chronicle
New Delhi, July 3: No bragging, no big-bang announcements. As anticipated, the first Railway Budget presented by Ms Mamata Banerjee on Friday was more like a thanksgiving speech that was full of political overtones and populist measures.
Keeping her word that the budget will be "of the people, for the people", Ms Banerjee came up with lots of goodies for all and sundry.
There were no fare hikes for railway passengers. Industry and exporters reeling under the economic slowdown were also spared from any hike in freight rates. Ms Banerjee announced 57 new trains, a new "Izzat" scheme for people with less than Rs 1,500 monthly income allowing them to travel up to 100 km every day on a Rs 25 monthly pass, women-only suburban trains in Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata and cheap "Yuva" trains for young people.
Unlike her predecessor Lalu Prasad Yadav, who was feted by global and Indian business schools for turning the Indian Railways into a profit-making enterprise, the Trinamul Congress supremo attempted an image makeover that fits into the social inclusion agenda of the ruling United Progressive Alliance.
"Are the fruits of development to be restricted only to a privileged few and not to the teeming population in remote and backward areas of our country?" she asked in her Budget speech.
She announced the setting up of an expert committee to advise her on innovative financing and implementation of "economically unviable" but "socially des-ired" projects.
Ms Banerjee accorded the highest priority to passenger amenities, offering something for every section and region. However, West Bengal and Bihar continued to be the fulcrum of the 57 new trains which will begin services this year. A new train service christened "Duronto", which means "restless" in Bengali, was also announced. It simply means that a dozen nonstop trains will operate between select cities. She also extended the connectivity of 27 trains and increased the frequencies of 13 more.
Ms Banerjee promised to end the serpentine queues at rail reservation counters across the country by adding 200 new towns and 800 locations to the passenger reservation network. For passengers struggling with unreserved tickets, there will now be 3,000 more unreserved ticketing systems. Not just that, by the yearend passengers would be able to receive SMS updates on waitlist, berth and coach numbers.
For easy reservations in rural areas, 5,000 post offices would sell computerised rail tickets. Safety would be accorded priority by installing ultrasonic flaw-detecting machines and wheel-impact load-detectors. In addition, the implementation of anti-collision devices would also be extended over 1,700 km in the southern, south central and southwestern regions.
For passengers worried over security, it’s time to relax. The Railways will revamp and implement an integrated security scheme for 140 sensitive stations. There would be more commando battalions and women RPF squads deployed at these stations.
To remove filth at stations and in coaches, the minister announced an expansion of the on-board housekeeping scheme to cover 200 additional pairs of trains. There would also be environment-friendly "green" toilets on long-distance trains akin to those seen on aircraft.
The railway minister managed to keep the private sector happy and hopeful with her huge PPP (public-private partnership) offers in segments, such as building 50 world-class stations, commercially developing unused railway land and setting up of a new loco factory in the vicinity of politically volatile Lalgarh on the West Bengal-Jharkhand border.
