Prabhu promises independence of development authority

Rail Bhawan alone will shoot 4.5 lakh emails to target groups. But the revised estimates indicate a much higher figure.

In view of urgency to provide connectivity to ports across the 7,517km coastline, the minister said rail connectivity to ports at Nargol and Hazira in Gujarat would be taken up in the ensuing fiscal under PPP. Prabhu’s calculations are based on factors like change of mindset and improving economy.

He said: “The rail minister has raised the plan outlay to Rs.1.21 lakh crore from Rs. 1 lakh crore in the previous budget”.

Revenue from this stream is only about four per cent of its total revenues.

The proposed budget does not envisage an increase in passenger kilometre or passengers, however earning from various segments are forecasted to grow by an average of 10-12 percent, thus leaving the door open for fare hikes during the year. But where will the money come from?

The focus will be on capital expenditure with a mix of various sources of funding in order to ensure the projects are given assured funding.

Through these initiatives, Modi wants to hold on to the votes of the underprivileged class it had got in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections which now seems to be slipping away from the BJP as witnessed during the Bihar Assembly polls.

“In the a year ago, we have seen lot of success and this budget is an effort to further improve on this”, he said, while noting that along with IT, investment has been given importance. “We are still waiting for the budget”.

Yet, there were positive outcomes from the budget as well. For instance, the three new train services which have been announced are not the run-of-the-mill ones that Ministers have in the past foisted on Indian Railways without considering either their viability or the network’s capacity to handle them efficiently. “In the coming financial year, we are increasing the senior citizen quota per coach by 50 per cent resulting in nearly 120 lower berths per train for senior citizens”, said Prabhu.

The capacity of the online reservation system will be increased from 2,000 to 7,200 tickets per minute. He has proposed commissioning of Wi-Fi services at 100 railway stations this year and at a total 400 in the next two years.

Laced with many Hindi terms, which appeared to show the stamp of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Mr Prabhu gave the slogan of Chalo milkar kuch naya karen (Let’s do something new together), which essentially captured the new theme of partnering with state governments, private players and PSU firms for taking up new projects. Prabhu also promised a regulatory authority for railways soon, and sought cooperation from the opposition to make it happen. India’s vast railroad network was once a point of pride but is now hobbled by aging infrastructure.

Some 23 million, mostly poor, people use India’s trains every day, and together with the railways’ workforce of 1.3 million, have made successive governments reluctant to adopt reform.