NEW DELHI: Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu on Thursday, with an eye on young India, spared the passengers from any fare hike, promising to make their train travel a “happy experience,” but he went on to slap a 10 per cent increase in the base class of items as well as on food grains, pulses and urea that is bound to make the farm produces costlier.
Also slightly tweaked upwards are the freight rates on 10 commodities like 0.8 per cent hike on kerosene, cooking gas (LPG), iron, steel and iron ore for domestic use, 2.7 per cent on cement an slag, 2.1 per cent on groundnut oil, 3.1 per cent on pig iron and metal scrap, 3.5 per cent on bitumen and coal tar and 6.3 per cent on coal. The only items getting a minute drop in the freight rates are limestone, dolomite and manganese ores (-0.3%) and high speed diesel oil (-1%).
The 61-year old Mumbai chartered accountant, who drifted from the Shiv Sena to the BJP as his original party refused to let him join the Modi government, literally missed the train in not meeting the requirement of the railway budget to lay plans for new trains and increased frequency of the existing ones.
He could not get completed the review he had ordered by the time he rose to present his maiden railway budget to assess how to overcome the hurdles of the overutilised line capacity and backlog of track renewals. So he will have a new date for announcing new trains and frequency of others that he promised in this session itself that goes on till May 8 as he said “review will be completed soon.”
Prabhu, however, did not forget his own city of Mumbai as he announced to introduce air-conditioned service on its suburban sections “after comprehensive assessment of ongoing trials,” promise of Delhi-Mumbai journey completed overnight once the speed of nine corridors increased from 110 and 130 km per hour to 160 and 200 respectively, and not to forget the special project of high speed bullet train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad as he promised quick and appropriate action once the feasibility study in advanced stage and expected by mid of 2015 reaches the Railways. He said studies are also being commissioned on other high speed routes on the diamond quadrilateral.
Unveiling his 5-year action plan that goes beyond the present government’s tenure with 11 major thrust areas for “Kayakalp” (innovation) and transformation of the Indian Railways, Prabhu talked of priority in the next five years on improving capacity on the existing high-density networks as it is cheaper since no major land acquisition involved and completion time is shorter.
“The emphasis will be on gauge conversion, doubling, tripling and electrification. Average speed will increase. Trains will become more punctual. Goods trains can be timetabled,” he said and then switched over in Hindi to state: “Par mere man me savaal uthta hai — He Prabhu, ye kaise hoga? (But a question uppermost in my mind, oh Lord, how will it happen?”
Big laughter from the whole House as his surname is Prabhu. But he then went on to answer himself in same vein in Hindi that “Prabhu” did not respond when “this Prabhu” thought ways can be found out in the century year of Mahatma Ganhi coming to India.
“Such a big country, such a big network, so many resources, such a large manpower and such a strong political will (turning to look at Prime Minister Narendra Modi), then why can’t there be the rebirth of Railways,” he said, adding: “I am convinced we can deliver. But we cannot deliver overnight. We will build bit by bit, incrementally. The legacy of past decades will take some time to neutralise.”
With this, he presented an agenda for the next five years for the Indian Railways to go through a transformation and promised to follow it up with a Vision-2030 document he intends to bring out later this year.
Notwithstanding the Railways ending the current fiscal of 2014-15 with an estimated surplus of Rs 7278 crore, not big enough for so many pending works, Prabhu talked of tapping all possible resources and even asked the MPs to donate from their MPLAD fund for improving the passenger amenities and invited them to head the divisional committees to offer solutions that satisfy the local people.
Noting that the budgetary support was not enough to fund even the large number of ongoing projects, he said they can be accelerated completion by tapping market funding from institutional finance agencies and multilateral lending. More than 100 projects valuing more than Rs one lakh crore have been identified for completion through extra-budgetary resource, “subject to due process being followed,” he said.
Other resources he sought to tap included “partnership” with the state governments, multilateral and bilateral organisations, pursuing PSUs to build capacity for transport of critical commodities like coal, iron ore and cement, and partner with the private sector “to improve last mile connectivity, expand our fleet of rolling stock and modernise our station infrastructure.”
He was, however, quite alert to ensure nobody accuses him of privatisation of the railways as he said: “Rail will continue to be our precious national asset. It will continue to serve the common man. The people of India will always own Railways.”
