(Railway Budget: Icing, Up-sizing, and Pricing) A cake needs three elements without which it is tasteless and bland. First, it needs icing on it. Second, it must be up-sized, i.e., enhanced in size, if the group is large. And third, it must be right-priced to be affordable to everyone but in line with the economics to sustain the cake provider. Indian railway system is a metaphorical cake which, at this juncture, needs all the three elements desperately. Improvement in existing services is icing on this cake. Examples are clean toilets, hygienic food, and security etc. Up-sizing is the second element needed urgently in the form of increasing the railway-availability, augmenting the frequencies, and improving the capacities to accommodate passengers etc. This requirement is critically urgent in a country where shortage of the trains in proportion to the large population is pathetic. It is such pathetic that when the booking begins, 60 days prior to your planned journey, probability of a confirmed berth is meager, leave alone a confirmed berth at a short notice. Pricing is another issue, and the irony is we want both icing and up-sizing, but without right-pricing. The present budget has addressed all the three challenges Indian railway is facing, albeit with different priorities: services far from satisfactory, poor availability of trains in comparison to a large population, and politically considered prices in line with bad economics. In my opinion, upsizing the railway-availability should have been accorded a bigger priority than it has been. Railway-budget may not be adequate, but certainly it is excellent as it has given a good bye to populist bad economy prevailing in the railway pricing system for the last many decades with a myopic political framework. The present budget, despite the absence of a few required points in it, definitely is forward-looking in its approach and orientation. It promises to provide the much needed strong foundations to the worlds largest railway system - a foundation without which it would have collapsed miserably. Welcome to wisdom, boldness, and courage of the government. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------(Parijat Sinha)
Posted on: Thu, 10 Jul 2014 06:38:04 +0000
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