We all have heard the old adage “A Journey is more important than the Destination”. It would not be incorrect to assume that the person who penned this adage would probably have taken the Indian Rail road for there is nothing more fascinating that travelling in the Great Indian Railways which introduces us to the various landscapes, people from different walks of life & the food. The 163 year old Indian Railways continues to be one of the world's largest railway networks comprising 115,000 km (71,000 mi) of track over a route of 65,808 km (40,891 mi) and 7,112 stations.

In 2014-15 alone IR carried 8.397 billion passengers annually or more than 23 million passengers a day (roughly half of whom were suburban passengers). This again roughly translates moving the entire equivalent of Australian continent each day. Also in the year FY-15 it carried approximately 1058.81 million tons of freight in the year. No wonder given the sheer scale and the numbers involved, it was a prudent recommendation in hindsight by the 10 member-Acworth Committee, headed by British railway economist William Acworth (The "Acworth Report") led to reorganization of railways & had the railway finances of India separated from the general government finances for the first time in 1924 which continues till date.

For the last few years or even decades, the Railways have been facing a tremendous strain financially mainly due to political reasons which led to introduction of populist budgets leading to actual state of decay. The rail minister portfolio earlier used to go to the strongest regional ally often leading to state-centric announcements with Bihar & Bengal especially gaining a lot at the expense of the nation.

The populist & senseless doles meant falling revenue collection and increasing demand to fund various capacity augmentation projects effectively meaning that the most popular mode of transportation was fast losing to other modes of transport.

The railway budget was presented by Honorable Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu on Feb 25^th. . Presenting his second railway budget Suresh Prabhu who has been working diligently in improving the performance, enhancing the efficiency and striving to meet the customer expectations, the minister has walked on a tightrope having to strike a precarious financial balance.

The Minister Suresh Prabhu needs to be complimented for radically departing from how a Rail Budget is presented in India. At the same time he needs to be admired for bringing innovation, an example of which was breaking the age old tradition where the minister had to wait for a year to announce the new trains in the upcoming Rail Budgets.

Between last year & now several trains were inaugurated purely based on the demand & the tickets were priced based on the airline model. This saw significant revenue upside in the ever busy routes such as the Mumbai-New Delhi corridor.

Obviously there is bound to be disappointment in certain walks of life, as it has always been the case post Rail budget, but this time the reasons would be different. Earlier the grievances that one would often hear is the discrimination against the states which didn’t vote for the ruling party or due to coalition dharma or compulsions introducing newer trains on already congested routes with no patronage or increasing the halts for even the premier trains such as Rajdhani Express just because your MP or MLA is from that particular place and requires that special privilege.

This time around the disappointment was in store for those chasing easy headlines and simple talking points in terms of the number of new trains, or whether the rail minister favored his home state.  Suresh Prabhu in this budget had rightly brought attention to long term perspective, be it capacity enhancement, passenger safety, enhanced connectivity & more importantly improving the speed.

As mentioned in his speech Mr Suresh Prabhu has set his eyes on achieving the following targets by FY 2020, namely “ reserved accommodation on trains being available on demand; time-tabled freight trains, high-end technology to improve the safety record;  elimination of all unmanned level crossings;  increased punctuality to almost 95 percent; increased average speed of  both the passenger & freight trains; semi high-speed trains running along the golden quadrilateral and zero direct discharge of human waste."

The Rail Budget has proposed joint ventures with states for newer projects which automatically would mean that the states decide on the areas which need greater attention in bringing connectivity. Atleast 17 states are in principle agreement and around half a dozen MoUs have been signed.

It is very evident over the past one year Mr Prabhu has primarily focused on how to make the best use of technology, even this year’s budget had laid out provisions for introducing Wi-Fi enabled stations, integrated mobile applications, ecommerce platforms & barcoded tickets to name few of them.
At the same time he had applied conventional wisdom by announcing the Aastha Circuit trains and routes to connect the pilgrim centers namely Ajmer, Amritsar, Dwarka, Gaya, Haridwar, Nanded, Nasik, Tirupati, Varanasi & Vasco lending credence of India being a spiritual nation. Needless to say all these routes would enjoy significant patronage throughout the year.

One of the interesting aspect seemed to have caught the imagination of even our railway minister was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s buzz word “startup” which made a surprising appearance in minister’s speech. Suresh Prabhu announced that Indian Railways will offer grants to startups to innovate—and had roped in Ratan Tata as one of its advisors. Mr Prabhu had already set up at 50 crore start up fund for the Railway employees.

The Salient Features of Mr Suresh Prabhu’s second rail budgets were:

1.No hike in Passenger fares.

2.Introduction of Overnight double-decker trains (Uday) on select business travel routes.

3.Introduction of Newer categories of trains Humsafar (Fully Third AC) & Tejas (Speed of around 130kmph).

4.Enhanced capacity of e-ticketing system from 2,000 tickets/min to 7,200/min.

5.Ticket cancellation facility through 139 helpline number.

6.Increased quota for Senior Citizens and women travellers.

7.All major stations to be brought under CCTV surveillance in a phased manner.

8.Wi-Fi at 100 stations this year and 400 stations next year.

9.Deen Dayal coaches for long distance trains for unreserved passengers.

10.Introduction of Clean-my coach SMS based facility.

11.As a part of ongoing Swacch Bharat campaign introduction of 17000 bio toilets and additional toilets in 475 stations before the close of this financial year.

12.Janani Sewa-Children's menu, baby foods, baby boards to be made available for travelling mothers.

On the technical side a total target 3,600 Km of electrification has been proposed of which 1,600 km of electrification would be achieved this year and the remaining 2,000 km for the next year.

Similarly the commissioning of the Broad Gauge routes in the Lumding-Silchar section in Assam, & Mizoram and Manipur would bring the perennially neglected North East into the main stream India.

Overall the performance over the last one year was significantly a better one and passes on all the grounds with one exception wherein the Freight earnings declined by almost 8% due to low demand from the core sector and due to serious competition from the Roadways sector and the emerging Shipping sector as well. However a savings of Rs 8,720 crores neutralized most of this revenue shortfall.

For this current fiscal year, the one major problem that might escalate quickly in to a headache for Suresh Prabhu is the looming impact of the Seventh Pay Commission and increased productivity bonus payouts this as with the implementation of the 7th Pay Commission recommendations, the revenue expenditure will shoot up considerably. This calls for a competitive tariff structure for freight trains which could offset the slide of traffic to roads.

The three pillars that Mr Prabhu outlined in his speech Nav Arjan (New Revenues), Nav Manak (New Norms) & Nav Sanrachna (New Structures) will effectively be the source which would provide steam to the Indian Railways & play a pivotal role in the India Growth story.

Last but not the least, this year’s budget had a humane face as well when it decided to do away the colonial legacy of using the derogatory term of “coolie” and has now replaced it with much more meaningful “sahayak”.

Overall this year’s Rail Budget emerges as a winner and Mr Prabhu is taking the Indian Railways on the right track.