But in a monotonously long and meandering speech delivered by the Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley that ran into 55 pages with all its political overtones, proposals pertaining to the rail ministry were restricted to less than two pages! Whether the railway staff or real-time rail users were happy or otherwise by this perfunctory approach to the nation’s arterial mode of transport that criss-cross the country carrying lakhs of passengers and millions of tones of freight day in and day out, the Finance Minister said that he felt “privileged to present the first combined Budget of independent India that includes the Railways also”.

The salient points flagged off in the rail component of the General Budget include among others, a provision of Rs 1.31 lakh crore of capital and development expenditure including the Centre’s gross budgetary support (GBS) of Rs 55,000 crore for 2017-18, enhanced focus on passenger safety, cleanliness, finance and accounting reforms, a Rashtriya Rail Sanraksha Kosh or special safety fund with a corpus of one lakh crores of rupees spread over a five year, enhancing the throughput by 10 per cent in the next three years and commissioning of 3,500 kms of new railway lines, against 2800 kms in 2016-17. Besides, a start has been made to station redevelopment with at least 25 stations getting the nod, while 500 stations would be made differently-abled people friendly by providing lifts and escalators. Providentially, the temptation to unveil new trains or new routes was wisely resisted this time!

For passenger amenities, the focus is on swacch rail by introducing “Coach Mitra” facility to register all coach-related complaints and requirements with the promise that all coaches of IR would be fitted with bio-toilets. It is altogether a jolting ground reality that even in prestigious trains like Tamil Nadu Express, the passenger amenities in the air-conditioned coach travelers are none too gratifying with water in the toilets running short to make passengers squirm! One can see all sorts of vendors from major junctions boarding and de-boarding in the running trains in between stations with or without the connivance of the railway staff! The quality of dishes served or sold within the train leaves a lot to be desired, while ordinary tea/coffee is too sugary to make the diabetic traveler quiver and shudder. It is time the railway authorities made a thorough introspection and put an end to all these pinpricks so that the cross country journey of close to two days linking Delhi with any major city down South is passable.

The grand claim by the Finance Minister that the railways would implement end to end integrated transport solutions for select commodities through partnership with logistics players with customized rolling stocks and practices to transport perishable goods, especially agricultural products is now passé. One has been hearing this for quite a number of years in the past from successive rail ministers and no worthwhile start has been made till now. About accounting reforms mentioned by various expert committees including the Debroy Committee, the assurance that accrual based financial statement would be rolled out by March 2019, deferring it for a couple of years even from now!

Interestingly, the Finance Minister has indicated that in order to continuously improve the operating ratio of the railways, the tariffs of railways would be fixed, taking into consideration costs, quality of service, social obligation and competition from other forms of transport. Now that there is no separate Rail Budget to demand roll-back of passenger fare or freight rate hike in Parliament, the executives in their guts sense can go about adjusting prices of their services as and when the situation demands, making the already uncompetitive freight movement a nightmare for rail users from industry. It needs to be noted that railway revenues are primarily earned through the twin streams, passenger and freight, while some earnings do accrue by luggage/parcels, commercial utilization of land, siding charges, advertisement and dividend disbursed by Railways’ PSUs under two categories called ‘other coaching and sundries”. The earnings are utilized to meet the operating expenses called in technical parlance the Ordinary Working Expenses (OWE), Depreciation and Pensionary charges. The remaining surplus(partly used to pay dividend earlier which stands liquidated with the merger of the rail budget to the general budget) would, one legitimately surmise, be entirely redeployed as plan investment for meeting safety and development needs of the railways.

But the operating ratio, having improved in 2012-13 and 2015-16 to 90.2 per cent and 90.5 per cent respectively, worsened in the current fiscal as the revised figure is pegged at 94.6 per cent. To put it simply, in order to earn one rupee, the railways spend as much 95 paise and it is like a besieged person seeking to know his fortune by spending a fortune!

While the budgetary provisions for Depreciation Reservation Fund (DRF) has been inching up over the past few years to take adequate care of the rolling stocks to keep them spic and span to run on the track sans hitches, there is a grouse that the system does not provide fully for budgeted sums but diverts this fund to dress up the operating ratio. If the DRF is slashed or diverted, the resultant casualty in the form of frequent accidents endangering the travelling public is ineluctable but deplorable. DRFs are used primarily for the maintenance of assets, tracks, bridges, wheels, coaches and wagons. A serious thought ought to be given not to tamper with the DRF. In order to make up the shortfall in revenue to fund operating expenses, unconventional means of marketing and using the immovable assets vested with the system in a productive fashion to rake in resources should be explored. (IPA Service)