A level headed Railway minister gets the sack

Dinesh Trivedi presented his frist ever Railway budget on March 14 th and had to resign on the same day because his party TMC did not approve the passenger fare hikes proposed by Trivedi in his Railway budget.It must be born in mind the passenger fares were not hiked by railways for the last 10 years,and the finances of railways are not rosy .Indian railways is the largest employer in the world.Trivedi said if the passenger fares are not raised the railways would come to a grinding halt. That would be the most disastorous thing to happen to this nation.The fuel prices have been increased umpteen times in the last 10 years.But the railways never increased the passenger fares for the last 10 years.Politicians want their populist schemes to be carried out ,but never cared about sound administrative or fiscal  mangement.Knowing pretty well, the financial postion of railways is not all that good,TMC wants fare hike to be rolled back,for the sake of common man .The reaction of the common man is not that harsh over the fare hike .Because Trivedi's predecessors did not raise the fare for a decade, Trivedi had to raise it by 2 to 3 pasie per km ,for second class,suburban trains and 5 pasie per km for sleeper class ,which is just and reasonable.If Trivedi's predecessors had increased the fares by at least 1 paise per km every year this situation would not have arised. I am once again reminded about what Nani Palkiwala once said about budgets.He said budgets are exercises where economics is defeated by politics.Mamta asking Trivedi to rollback fare hike or resign is ridiculous.As Railway minister,Trivedi has done justice to his role .

For the first time  a level headed Railway minister Trivedi has suggested a Railway Tariff regulatory Authority that would recommend freight and passenger fares.This would prevent future Railway ministers from implementing their politically expedient schemes.The populist moves by politicians in not increasing the fares ,where required is widely practiced by  politicians of all hues across the nation.The result is, most public sector undertakings by the government ,no matter whether it is state government or central government are running on losses.In Tamilnadu the passenger fares of government run transport buses were not increased for many years, despite frequent fuel price hikes and finally the present incumbent government had to go in for a steep hike,yet not commensurate with expenditure.To please the electorate the politicians defer fare hikes and finally a steep raise has to be made to make the organisation viable.In the mean time , due to financial crunch the concerned department initiates austerity measures and the casualty is the quality of service by these departments.This is also applicable to many of the electricity boards of the country.The Electricity tariffs are not raised for years together and now most EB's are in red and have a power crisis across the nation.Mismanagement and continuous emphasis on subsidy,despite the organisation making losses are the sole reason for failure of public sector undertakings in our country. Added to this,our politicians are promising a freebie galore to the electorates at the time of polls .Where do we have funds to finance all these schemes?.If we continue to run our public sector undertakings this way,all of them would end up bankrupt and that would not be a good news for the projected growth.Hope our politicians become little more prudent and not impulsive in their knee jerk reactions.If the passenger fare hikes are rolled back,it would be the saddest day for Indian Railways.