Depending on which stakeholder heard Ms Mamata Banerjee read out the Railway Budget, the takeaways will differ. For the middle-class Indian the absence of any passenger fare hikes for the third successive year will come as relief and boost the Railway Minister's rating to the discomfiture of her political opponents. For the rural, back-of-the-beyond Indian, with poor access to railways, the addition of a number of new lines and employment opportunities through rail-based factories will be welcome; so will it be for those living in low-employment and politically-sensitive Jammu and Kashmir or the North-East, where she proposes a rail line to Imphal, the capital of Manipur, that will also acquire a diesel locomotive unit.
Behind the rhetoric about the role of the Railways and the concern for a “rail revolution”, Ms Banerjee has laid out a budget with a thrust. As against just 10,677 km of new lines since Independence, the Railway Minister had announced last year a target of 1,000 km a year; she admits that the railways fell short by 300 km but even so the targets for gauge conversion, doubling and electrification — all ramped up last year — have been met. Set against this sort of commitment, the Railway Minister's ambitious plans are eminently doable. Despite its vast network, parts of India are still uncovered and, while they may elicit some scepticism, her plans to link all the north-eastern States in seven years with a carefully, if clumsily-worded, “non-lapsable fund” should be lauded. To this end she has gone out on a limb pitching the new fiscal's annual plan at Rs 57,630 crore, the highest ever in a single year. But is it extravagant? Ms Banerjee expects her colleague at North Block to hand her nearly a third; but interestingly, another Rs 20,000 crore is to come from market borrowings. The Indian Railway Finance Corporation, in addition to the Rs 9,000 crore it raises for leasing rolling stock, will now issue tax-free bonds for Rs 10,000 crore for “select enhancement work”. Here lies a challenge: for a government concerned about its fiscal deficit, bonds of this type defeat the purpose, unless the Railways show better results in the coming years. It is one thing to note proudly that gross receipts are inching towards Rs 1 lakh crore, quite another that the operating ratio, the money spent to earn some, has zoomed. Perspective is also lacking in the stress on expansion of suburban networks in Mumbai and Kolkata, when it might have been appropriate to her Vision 2020 to consider similar services for Tier two cities that are rapidly expanding. Ms Banerjee has also tiptoed around the steady climb in the operating ratio; five years ago it was around 76 per cent; now it 91 per cent. That should worry her a lot.