Railway minister Suresh Prabhu on Tuesday said the government will bring a White Paper on Railways, accompanied with a Vision document on the deliverables of his ministry.
Prabhu also reiterated that Indian Railways will not be privatised. The last White Paper and a Vision 2020 document was tabled in December 2009 by the then railway minister Mamata Banerjee. The targets then set have already receded into the horizon.
Prabhu has also written to all members of Parliament to use their local area development funds for the railway work.
In his address to the General Managers' Conference in New Delhi – an annual ritual for the budget making process -- Prabhu said work on a White Paper on Railways is underway. A railway ministry official told dna, "The White Paper on Railways will mainly look at issues such as dynamic revenue earning model, freight and fare rationalisation, and capacity augmentation." The official, however, did not disclose when White Paper would be presented in Parliament.
"Ownership of Railways always remain with the government. We need funds to invest in various pending projects and future projects. Vigorous efforts are being made to mobilise investments. Capacity augmentations is another important area which needs attention as we have to decongest highly dense traffic routes through double line, triple line or more lines, besides creating new railway connectivity. Railways will also have to modernise its rolling stocks, signalling system, safety operations," said Prabhu.
The previous White Paper presented by Mamata Banerjee took the fizz out of her predecessor Laluprasad Yadav's claim that the Railways had reserves worth Rs 80,000 crore. Banerjee's White Paper claimed that the figures quoted by Yadav were nothing but an accounting sleight of hand. This time around, the current minister Prabhu is mainly focusing on the tapping more revenue channels. He has also formed a single man committee of former banking and financial services secretary D K Mittal to provide recommendations on the new fund raising and revenue models for Railways.
According to the source, the railway ministry needed investment of Rs 140,000 crore annually to build new infrastructure, but now this requirement has growth fourfold. "For the current ongoing projects, we need at least Rs 5 to 6 lakh crore annually now," he said.
Mega railway infrastructure projects have been standstill for want of appropriate policies. The government, on one hand is talking about Delhi Mumbai corridors, but on the another policy for manufacturing locomotives that are required to power these corridors is not yet in shape. The Madhepura locomotive factory was announced in the 2007-08 railway budget, but the government has not been able to finalise the model biding document for the project.
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