Budget doesn’t depict a promising future for railways

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RN Misra: Feb 27 2013, 03:41 IST

In January 2013, the railway minister had announced a fare hike, which was overdue for several years. As expected, the Rail Budget 2013-14 did not propose any further increase in fares. The hike ranged from 2 paise a km for Class II ordinary (suburban) passenger to 10 paise for AC Chair Car. The fare hike in AC2 and AC1, as was proposed in the previous budget, has been kept intact.

But the increase in fares across the board cannot be justified because it has given no relief to the common man whose only affordable means of transportation is the railways. In the budget, the minister should have spared second-class ordinary passengers up to 100 km. They are the bulk users of the railways and belong to the economically lower strata of the society. How can the present budget justify the UPA’s inclusive model of growth?

Even otherwise, adopting an easy formula, or creating dependence on effortless earning of revenue through fare hike, is not proper for the real growth of railways’ economy. This provides just an incremental value to adjust with the inflationary pricing trend, but cannot be treated as a solution to earning income for a long-term investment process and modernisation programme. The present budget proposes to earn R6,600 crore from fare hike.

The railways cannot come out as a shining and promising sector unless it proposes untiring efforts to increase volume of traffic to the tune of 3- 5% more than the real GDP rate of growth. In the present

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