According to the Railway Board in the Ministry of Railways, this decision, when enforced, will offset partly losses incurred by passenger services. Presently, the size of losses incurred by the railways on passenger services on account of various concessions, freebies and operational costs are of the order of over Rs.33, 000 crores, which are sought to be altogether done away with by the NDA Government, coming on the heels of 100 per cent Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in Indian Railways, growing emphasis on Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) module for expansion and growth of railways, reducing job opportunities in railways, and a road map for privatization of Indian Railways, already drawn, without making it a formal decision, unbridled market borrowings together with loans from various bilateral and multilateral sources, drowning Indian Railways under growing debt trap, seem to be leading to anti-people measures. These measures now underway will ultimately increase costs of rail services to the nation intended to make travel costs prohibitive.
The decision to withdraw concessions to children of 5-12 years is perceived to be anti-people intended to affect domestic tourism, religious tourism and travel by general public with their family. This together with service tax, fuel surcharge and quietly ever tinkering of passenger services costs affect the travelling public.
In this connection, it is stated that the railways are the one and only mode of bulk public transportation with no alternative mode of cost effective transportation mode for general public, a large majority of whom are poor. Added to this, in our system of rule of law based democratic governance, people are sovereign masters, who elect the government of the day. The democratically elected government, therefore, has no business to barter away sovereign rights of the people. In addition, the decision affects the hitherto held balance between social responsibility of railways and its economic viability. The government of the day has no business to take away various concessions provided to people in passenger services.
Viewed in the context of considerable budgetary reduction in the social sector welfare programmes like Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, National Rural Health Mission, education, women and child development, slide in agricultural development, growing distress of farmers et al by the NDA Government, withdrawal of 50 per cent concession in rail tickets for children of 5-12 years is a slow poison to kill entitled based social distributive welfare measures to make the poor still poorer, a regressive steps. Considered in the backdrop of legal protection and care provided to children by the state world wide, the impugned decision of the railways bodes ill for the government in our democratic frame where government is bound to work for public welfare. It’s time the existing concession continued!
India
Adult train fare for children below 12 years!
M.Y.Siddiqui - 2015-12-12 02:41
In a move to part reduce cross subsidization of passenger services from freight earnings, the Ministry of Railways has decided to charge full adult fare for children of 5-12 years in reserved seats or berths from April, 2016. At present, children of 5-12 years are charged half of the adult tickets and children below 5 years travel free of costs, across all classes, reserved and unreserved. However, children of 5-12 years will continue to travel in unreserved seats/berths, as at present, at half the adult tickets. Children below 5 years will continue to travel free without claim to seats/berths in all reserved or unreserved classes. According to official sources, date of enforcing this decision and detailed modalities will be notified later.