Railway Budget : Is It That Unnecessary ??
The Railway Budget is the usual way to get going the Budget carnival in our country. This year the Railway Budget was presented on 25 February and subsequently The Union Budget was presented 4 days later. Now the government is working to merge the former into the later as Railway minister Suresh Prabhu has already written letters to Finance Minister to scrap the grand old tradition of having a separate budget for Indian Railways. He argued that since other countries do not have a Railway Budget , our country also does not need one. Various intellects and bureaucrats also favoured for the same. Though according to me this matter needs more discussions and thinking .
I personally want The Railway Budget to be announced every year in line with the tradition . It is not that I want to hear all the populist measures taken by the respective Railway Ministers , nor I want to hear his/hers prolonged speech about initiatives to rejuvenate near bankrupt department.
I want a Railway Budget so that the sorry state of the national behemoth does not get unnoticed. Yes, gone are those days when money allocated to Railway was more than 70% of the total budget, as most of the spending went to build railway infrastructure in British era , still railways has huge relevance to most of the people and to the business. For whatever Rail Budget is worth or not , it still directs attention the grim condition of the public transporter. The annual scrutiny keeps the pressure on bureaucrats to show some growth and progress of railways comparing to the previous year. Thus if Railway Budget is merged with the Union Budget, all the inefficiencies , losses , deficits of railway will be get lost under the promises 8% GDP growth of economy and lofty words of investment and FII inflows and no one will bother about gloomy state of railways. Then the deficit of railways will continue to rise and government will have to one day bail out so called " to big to fail" department with tax payers money , probably by introducing " Save railway cess"
There may be numerous reasons to do away with The Railway Budget . Some benefits can always be found to justify the move. But that will be a big blow to the reform progress of the railway. The reform process of the behemoth is moving very slowly, but under Union budget the process may get stopped altogether. The railway should be spun off as a commercial entity . Apart from social welfare, there should be some motive for profit. The fare should be depoliticized . We must remember that railway is still dominant mode of public as well as freight transport. The former Maruti Suzuki MD Jagdish Khattar rightly said , "According to me Railway Budget is more important than this (Union) Budget. The fact is Railways is the lifeline of the entire industry and the country, I am not a great believer of Budget, if you look at the speeches of the previous Finance Ministers, the promises they made were concerned with other ministries and they never implemented them. So I think major changes have to take place to come from the ministers themselves to implement it," . At this crucial juncture of our economy we can not let Railway to go out of public notice, something that inefficient bureaucracy will welcome.
Thanks for reading.
acharyagoutamkumar@gmail.com
I personally want The Railway Budget to be announced every year in line with the tradition . It is not that I want to hear all the populist measures taken by the respective Railway Ministers , nor I want to hear his/hers prolonged speech about initiatives to rejuvenate near bankrupt department.
I want a Railway Budget so that the sorry state of the national behemoth does not get unnoticed. Yes, gone are those days when money allocated to Railway was more than 70% of the total budget, as most of the spending went to build railway infrastructure in British era , still railways has huge relevance to most of the people and to the business. For whatever Rail Budget is worth or not , it still directs attention the grim condition of the public transporter. The annual scrutiny keeps the pressure on bureaucrats to show some growth and progress of railways comparing to the previous year. Thus if Railway Budget is merged with the Union Budget, all the inefficiencies , losses , deficits of railway will be get lost under the promises 8% GDP growth of economy and lofty words of investment and FII inflows and no one will bother about gloomy state of railways. Then the deficit of railways will continue to rise and government will have to one day bail out so called " to big to fail" department with tax payers money , probably by introducing " Save railway cess"
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| Do not brake the tradition sir... |
There may be numerous reasons to do away with The Railway Budget . Some benefits can always be found to justify the move. But that will be a big blow to the reform progress of the railway. The reform process of the behemoth is moving very slowly, but under Union budget the process may get stopped altogether. The railway should be spun off as a commercial entity . Apart from social welfare, there should be some motive for profit. The fare should be depoliticized . We must remember that railway is still dominant mode of public as well as freight transport. The former Maruti Suzuki MD Jagdish Khattar rightly said , "According to me Railway Budget is more important than this (Union) Budget. The fact is Railways is the lifeline of the entire industry and the country, I am not a great believer of Budget, if you look at the speeches of the previous Finance Ministers, the promises they made were concerned with other ministries and they never implemented them. So I think major changes have to take place to come from the ministers themselves to implement it," . At this crucial juncture of our economy we can not let Railway to go out of public notice, something that inefficient bureaucracy will welcome.
Thanks for reading.
acharyagoutamkumar@gmail.com
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