The Indian Railways is considering an optimum increase in the upper-class passenger fares while taking care to insulate the aam aadmi, travelling by other classes, from the effects of inflation in fuel prices and rising costs of operating trains.
While the finance ministry headed by Pranab Mukherjee would welcome it, the final nod has to come from West Bengal chief minister and Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee in Kolkata, without whose sanction railway minister Dinesh Trivedi cannot hope to effect poriborton in the way Indian Railways is run.
Mr Trivedi, a commerce graduate from Kolkata and an MBA from the United States, would like the Indian Railways to resemble a professionally-managed entity, one that can monetise its assets such as a railway station or other properties through a public-private partnership (PPP) while discharging its social responsibilities.
If Mr Trivedi has his way, the railway budget for 2012-2013 will focus on systemic rather than cosmetic changes; policy, not personality. So, expect no Kullarh (mud cup)-like announcement by Lalu Yadav when he was railway minister in UPA-1, or, the fashionably long speeches by his predecessors, including his own party chief Mamata Banerjee who presented the last three railway budgets. Not for him a speech resembling or sounding like a compendium of information such as introduction of new trains, extension of old trains or increase in their frequency.
What you can expect, though, is a focus on macro policy, with Rabindranath Tagore’s quotes and a “West Bengal package” thrown in. While Mr Trivedi has not revealed his mind on the issue of raising the passenger fares, he has spoken about the need for continuity in policies, irrespective of who the incumbent is in the railway ministry and which political party he or she belongs to.