When Trinamul Congress leader Mamata Banerjee presented her first Railway Budget last year, her heart lay in Kolkata, the “Mahanagar” she had set her sights on wooing in order to accomplish her primary objective of becoming the presiding deity at Writers’ Buildings. Accordingly, a single state — West Bengal — figured high in the railways’ scheme of things. Ms Banerjee’s stewardship attracted criticism all round. The project to woo the electorate in her home state impacted the railways’
performance. The state of its finances showed that the minister’s frequent absences from the nation’s capital affected high-level supervision in one of the country’s key infrastructure areas. Key sources of revenue generation were sacrificed on the altar of populism. Basically, the vision for the future of the railways — a vital key to the nation’s economic life — at a time of acceleration of India’s economic growth cried out for exposition. In the 2011-12 Railway Budget that she presented to Parliament on Friday, Ms Banerjee was circumspect about being openly solicitous of the West Bengal electorate. But if she does succeed in her ambition of becoming the state’s next chief minister this summer, this would have been her last chance at dispensing largesse courtesy the railways. It is evident she has not forgotten this. That much is evident from her ideas about metropolitan projects, the integrated suburban railway networks, or the “cultural activities” of the ministry under her charge. On the whole, the politician in Ms Banerjee has once again clearly trumped the manager of the nation’s high-value assets.
This time round the `57,630-crore investment outlay is more ambitious than last year. Even more interesting is the announcement about setting up of factories that would make coaches, tracking machines, diesel locomotives and bridges, and even a 700 mgw gas-based power plant in Maharashtra. Sceptics will be forgiven if they think that many of these are mere announcements, because the implementation of the promises made in the last Railway Budget appears to have got derailed. Indeed, the minister may have done well to have given a list of projects that have been completed. None of the public-private partnership projects, for instance, is said to have come up because of problems over land acquisition. The addition of 700 km of rail lines has been proposed this year even as last year’s target of 1,000 km is far from completion. Besides, there is the concern for the poor, social sector projects and the usual sops to senior citizens, students and women. Being political creatures, all ministers try to earn popular goodwill in this manner. But the far-sighted among them should also be concerned about the railways’ role in strengthening the nation’s economy. This can only happen if rolling stock of the right quality and specifications are created, economically viable freight corridors are established rather than just talked about, internal resources are generated by raising fares alongside improving passenger amenities, and rates for freight are skilfully upped while bypassing inflationary implications. Finding ways to cut the wage bill without hurting employment in select areas also goes with the job.
The railways carry about 50 per cent of the nation’s freight. If this effort is not stepped up by creating viable assets in the service of the economy, it will be bad news for the country. As Ms Banerjee herself noted while introducing the Railway Budget in Parliament, the objective should be for the railways to grow faster than the rate of GDP growth. The absence of this will create bottlenecks for the economy. The minister’s accounting system befuddles economists. They wonder if she has a magic wand that helped her produce a surplus larger than last year, although freight tonnage was down, there were disruption losses and the outgo on account of Sixth Pay Commission commitments was considerable.