Comment

Politicians never forget to take advantage of ‘people’s short memory’. It is useful, therefore, to keep live what Mamata Banerjee said of Lalu’s interim railway budget, immediately after its presentation, at least until she presents her own.

“A visionless budget with the mission to get votes,” is how she summed it up and said it was imperative that the new government worked with a long-term vision rather than take a short-term course.

On specific proposals in Lalu’s budget, Banerjee said there should have been a 10% slashing of ordinary passenger fares instead of a Re 1 cut proposed by Lalu. She was also critical of Lalu not reducing the freight charges. Referring to the Rs 90,000 crore cash surplus in the last five years, she said the Railways were charging 5% cess on the passenger fares while the funds earmarked for safety and security were being shown as surplus.

True, Lalu’s concern was only to earn commercial profits at the cost of social benefit from the railway infrastructure, his pet platitude of aam admi not withstanding.

Turnaround burden on aam admi

If the aam admi means those who travel in the general unreserved compartments —- including the poor migrant workers who journey from place to place in search of work; those who cannot plan their tours in advance to reserve seats; those who do not have the wherewithal to pay for higher class tickets but still have an urgent need to commute et al —- their lot has not improved a bit after Yadav took over the ministry.

The situation has not changed a bit even from Gandhiji’s time. Disgusted at the apathy of the Railways to improve the lot of the poor, the Mahatma had written:

“The third class compartments are practically as dirty, and the closet arrangements as bad, today (in 1919) as they were then (1902)...; third class passengers are treated like sheep and their comforts are sheep’s comforts”.

“The train arrived, and getting into it was another trial. There was a free exchange of abuse and pushes between passengers already in the train and those trying to get in. We ran up and down the platform, but were everywhere met with the same reply: No room here.”

Compare these observations with the present scenario —- be it on the local trains of Mumbai, the commercial capital of the country, or in the long distance mofussil trains —- the subhuman conditions and unsafe journeys testify to the fact that there is no difference between the conditions of general compartments a hundred years back and now. If anything, what was then called ‘third class’ is now called ‘second class’: life is not any different for this class of aam admi, second-class unreserved passenger. The turnaround hasn’t helped them at all.

If the railway employees are included in the aam admi class, even their lot has not improved; rather, they are crushed under the burden of the turnaround. Their number, as put by Nitish Kumar, then railway minister, in a status-paper of May 2002, was 18.07 lakh as on March 31, 1991, which had come down to 15.45 lakh by March, 2001, 14.24 lakh by March, 2005, and 14.06 lakh by March, 2007.

Though not through direct retrenchment, the Railways had their own specious methods of reducing the staffby not making fresh recruitment tothe extent of retirements and other natural wastages.

The net result is that the reduced numbers, by more than 4 lakh, are carrying on the increased work burden. More earnings —- the cash surplus of Rs 90,000 crore in four years —- meant more work.

Though euphemistically called ‘increased staff productivity’, it meant more work load on the staff, longer hours and fewer leaves, etc.

Safety sacrificed

Not only were the employees overburdened, but the wagons too were overloaded to increase the yield. The ministry allowed the Railways to increase the axle load up to a specified limit —- loading 10 tonnes more than their carrying capacity. Though this measure is obviously yielding higher revenues to the Railways, doubts are expressed on the safety; the overloading is suspected to lead to faster wear and tear of wagons and tracks, which are already ageing.

Similarly, the passenger coaches too are altered to carry more passengers; as many as 7,000 AC 3-tier and sleeper-class coaches now carry 81 passengers instead of 72 earlier.

The railway minister’s presentations in the business schools, and the assertions of his supporting experts not withstanding, the railway turnaround strategy in reality has focused on the cost cutting and revenue raising exercise, a simple business principle, putting the social objective, of providing cheap public transport, on the back burner.

The Railways have learnt to clandestinely hike the fares and freights before and after the presentation of budgets. For instance, it has increased the freight charges of cement by about 8% on December 5, 2008 and of the food grains, pulses and flour by 8.3% on February 11, 2009, almost on the eve of the budget; these revisions were effected through what was called reclassification.
Without these kinds of hikes, the traffic revenue projection, of Rs 93,159 crore and operating ratio (the ratio of working expenses to earnings) of 89.9%, in budget 2009-10 could not be possible.

The manipulations in the freight rates are steeper because the revenue from goods transport accounts for two-thirds of the Railways’ receipts. Besides freight tariffs, there are charges like busyseason, busy route and priority allotments and other means, which raise the transport cost of goods and thereby the prices in general —- surely a burden on the aam admi.

This is not to say that the passenger fares —- accounting for around 25% of the gross revenue —- are not altered through indirect methods. Examples of their alteration include, superfast charges on the trains through converting the trains into this class, whose speed is little less than 55 kilometres per hours on average, extraction in the name of Tatkal schemes, reservation charges, cancellation charges and separation of tickets for break of journeys or the journeys involved in two trains. The last measure means the scrapping of the telescopic method of charges, which meant lower rate per kilometer on longer distances.

But this gimmickry is only a part of the turnaround story. A good 8% growth in the GDP from 2004 has contributed to the increase in railway earnings, could be to the extent of 70%, as one estimate put it. After all, the demand for transportation of goods is derived from their increased production and demand.

The Railways, being an important infrastructure, are supposed to aid growth, help generate income and employment; and also, being in the public sector, its goal should be more social than commercial. They cannot ignore their important role of providing cheap urban, rural and semi-urban transport for different classes of people without regard to the direct profit or loss from a specific segment.

Will Mamata, who was critical of Lalu, really ponder over these facts and change the course set in motion by him?

raopsmrao@gmail.com