Suresh Prabhu, the railway minister, in his second rail budget drew out an ambitious plan to overhaul the entire railway system. However, there was one glaring problem in the entire agenda.While there was a lot of talk about investment, there wasn’t a clear cut path on how to raise the revenues to fund this expenditure.
While Prabhu said he would invest Rs 1.21 lakh crore in the current fiscal for a number of revamping purposes such as electrification of lines, three new trains, advanced coaches, new bio toilets, wi-fi services in collaboration with Google, catering services, National Academy of Indian Railways, more screens, which also includes borrowing Rs 20,000 crore, there wasn’t a clear roadmap of funding the expenditure.
While he has kept away from fare hikes, what he has failed to do also is set out a clear path from increase in revenues from freight traffic.
This budget has been all about creating and bolstering the current infrastructure without a fixed plan on how the investment will be divided on each of these expenditure areas.
What is has instead taken on himself is increased expenditure from all quarters, including electrification, track laying, as well as job creation.
While an increased impetus on creating more jobs is definitely welcome, what will become a big cause of concern from him is paying these increased number of employees.
He made a brave attempt in revamping entire system of through his new approaches- restructure, re-organise and rejuvenate, what one really needs to think hard about is without any new sources of revenue generation, this could end up being completely being unviable.
(Image: Indiatimes)