Prabhu tries to put rail back on track

Idea is to make Indian Railways carrier of national growth

Prime Minister Narendra Modi hand-picked Suresh Prabhu to head the key railways ministry in November last year to put the railways back on the tracks.

He earned Modi’s praise after he presented his maiden railways budget yesterday.

Prabhu, a chartered accounted by profession, had displayed his mettle as the federal power minister during the previous Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

He was not even a Member of Parliament and was sidelined by his party Shiv Sena, which is an NDA constituent.

Modi, however, went for horses for courses by appointing Prabhu as a cabinet minister and handing him over the key railways portfolio despite protests of Shiv Sena. Prabhu quit Shiv Sena and joined BJP and was nominated to the Rajya Sabha subsequently from Haryana.

His mandate was clear — to deliver and deliver fast by fulfilling Modi’s ambition to make Indian railways vehicle of national growth.

Prabhu did not disappoint Modi with his Thursday budget which had imprints of Modi’s thinking and style of functioning — breaking from the past tradition of using railway budget to offer goodies by announcing a slew of new plans, which seldom were implemented due to financial and infrastructure constraints.

According to estimates, out of 600 such plans announced by Prabhu’s predecessors over the years, nearly 50 per cent of them have remained on papers.

No new trains for Bihar

Although crucial assembly elections in Bihar are due later this year, no new trains or projects were announced to lure Bihar voters to vote for the BJP.

Instead, Prabhu decided to focus on the onerous work at hand of modernising railways rather than bleed it further by presenting a populist budget and making a political statement through it.

Prabhu’s pragmatic approach, reflected in his announcement that a study was currently underway to assess feasibility of starting new trains within the heavily stressed infrastructure and instead focus on making travel by rail safe and a pleasant Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu outlined four goals to transform the railways over the next five years. These are:

(a) to deliver a sustained and measurable improvement in customer experience, the railways is launching initiatives that will systematically address customer concerns about cleanliness, comfort, accessibility, service quality and speed of trains.

(b) Make rail a safer means of travel.

(c) To expand railway’s capacity substantially and to modernise infrastructure.

(d) To make railways financially self-sustainable, the Indian Railways will generate large surpluses from its operations not only to service the debt needed to fund capacity expansion, but also to invest on an ongoing basis to replace its depreciating assets. affair. There was no juggling with statistics, as was the norm in the past, to paint a rosy picture about railways.

He resisted temptations to hike passenger fares, which continue to be heavily subsidised, amid the Modi government’s decision to do away with all forms of subsidies in a phased manner considering railways need money to improve its infrastructure. Prabhu also resisted demands of lowering passenger fares in light of drastic decline is diesel prices.

Improvements

Instead Prabhu chose to get into small nitty-gritty that can make rail journey a pleasant exercise including ensuring one can purchase an unreserved ticket within five minutes of entering a railway station, providing mobile charging points even in general compartments, online booking of wheelchair and food, besides ensuring drastic improvement in toilets in trains and at railway stations to ensure cleanliness.

Prabhu also resisted the temptation of partly privatising railways and disposing of its huge assets, in form of vast chunks of land all over the country, to raise funds.

He had all the reasons to take the easier way out as he has fixed target of investing Rs8.5 trillion (Dh500 billion) over the next five years without specifying how he will raise this huge fund.

Simply put, Modi believes in long-term gains politically and Prabhu has managed to diagnose what ails Indian railways within three months of being in office while giving hopes that railways will have a smooth journey under him.