Feb.25 : Railway minister Mamata Banerjee’s budget proposals on Wednesday appear long on ambition, great on intent but short on specifics about the actual implementation of announced projects. The ambitious long-awaited freight corridor project, she said, would depend on land acquisition, going on to promise that one member of each displaced family would be given a job.
This formula was rejected long back as people asked to give up land and homes are no longer willing to accept exploitative conditions such as getting a low-level government job in return. In the same vein, many other proposed projects are dependent on land being available, and Ms Banerjee has already pledged that there will be no forcible acquisition by the railways. Or take the other exciting promise — that 1,000 km in new tracks will be laid in just a year. If this actually happens Ms Banerjee will easily overtake roads and highways minister Kamal Nath in terms of performance; but the reality is that in the past 50 years the railways have managed just 180 km of new tracks in a year. How this quantum jump will be achieved in 2010-11 has not been explained. Ms Banerjee might get a better idea were she to spend more time at Rail Bhavan, to do which she will have to balance her political ambitions in West Bengal with her duty to the travelling public of the entire country. It is true, as she says, that the railways have some very good officers, but in the end the leadership and vision must come from the minister.Having said that, it is undeniable that if much of the new projects come to fruition, they will change the face of the magnificent rail network that already exists, which needs proper maintenance and care. Long-distance passengers, in particular, need cleanliness, hygienic food and — above all — security when travelling. She has provided for clean (and cheaper) drinking water, and plans six new bottling plants for this. On security, the provision for female personnel to protect women on trains is welcome, but the railway minister correctly pointed out that the primary responsibility of ensuring passenger safety lay with the state governments. Ms Banerjee managed to walk the tightrope on balancing the need for economic viability and social desirability while extending the rail network to hitherto virgin areas, specially in the Northeast. To no one’s surprise, she managed a heavy tilt in new trains and projects for West Bengal a year before it holds landmark state Assembly elections. Given the weightage in favour of the incumbent railway minister’s home state, which has come to be the norm, it might be time to consider whether a new, transparent and equitable mechanism needs to be put in place to determine where new trains or railway lines are needed.There is renewed focus on public-private partnership, an idea first floated by Lalu Prasad Yadav, and the plan for a special task force with a 100-day decision deadline is forward movement. The travelling public will be happy there is no increase in passenger fares or freight charges (which in fact has been lowered marginally for kerosene, fertiliser and foodgrain traffic), but there are fears this might happen later quietly by the back door. At a time when protests are snowballing on the price front, the government understandably was in no mood to annoy larger sections of the population. But it must also be remembered that any budget is fundamentally a profit and loss statement, and while Ms Banerjee has claimed that despite the rising deficit she had saved almost Rs 2,000 crores by implementing austerity measures, there was no indication in her budget address when, or if ever, the Indian Railways can be run as a profitable operation.