When Nitish had first upstaged Lalu : The Tribune India

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When Nitish had first upstaged Lalu

NITISH Kumar would be drawing quiet satisfaction from having turned the tables on Lalu Yadav, a man who almost always stole the limelight because of his superior intercommunication skills.

When Nitish had first upstaged Lalu

Puttting Safety on track: One of the first initiatives that Nitish Kumar took as the Raliways Minister was to get a special rail safety fund approved. PTI



Sandeep Dikshit

NITISH Kumar would be drawing quiet satisfaction from having turned the tables on Lalu Yadav, a man who almost always stole the limelight because of his superior intercommunication skills. The careers of both Bihar politicians have run on parallel tracks. If Nitish was decidedly better than Lalu in governing Bihar, it is not known that he was instrumental in creating the ground for Lalu Yadav's spectacular success in running the Railway Ministry during the five years of UPA I.

So overwhelming was the narrative that Lalu and his Officer on Special Duty in the Railway Ministry, Sudhir Kumar, had walked away with all the accolades for turning around the Railways from a creaking debt-burdened institution to an organisation with a future. Sudhir Kumar went on to author a book on the Railways turnaround and Lalu went on to lecture at Harvard and become the subject of a case study at IIMs.

It was on a hot humid afternoon at his official residence in New Delhi that a teary-eyed Nitish Kumar decided to put in his papers after 17 months as the Railway Minister. The reason was an unending series of mind-numbing railway accidents culminating in the tragedy at Gaisal, a one-horse railway station in West Bengal situated among paddy fields and pineapple groves. The death of 250 passengers in a dead-of-the-night head- on collision between two speeding express trains summed up all that was wrong with the Railways: overused tracks, antiquated signalling and communications systems and a careless staff. The Railways had no money in the kitty to finance the modernisation while Nitish's self-serving predecessors — George Fernandes, Janeshwar Mishra, CK Jaffer Sharief and Ram Vilas Paswan — had no inclination to attend to the basics.              

Nitish was wiser when he took over as the Railways Minister for the second time in 2001. By then, Mamata Banerjee had further squeezed the Railways to accommodate the aspirations of her electorate in West Bengal. One of the first initiatives Nitish took was to persuade Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to approve a Special Railway Safety Fund. With a corpus of Rs 17,000 crore, Nitish ensured the money went only for track improvement, bridge rehabilitation work, rolling stock replacement, human resource development, improved inspection system and safety work at level-crossings.

The payback was not immediate. First, there was the headache of selecting the right technology followed by the painful tendering process. But Nitish persevered. One of his path-breaking initiatives concerned signalling. Till then trains were usually detained till the train ahead had crossed the next station. This meant that usually only one train could run between two stations. Nitish not only modernised the system to iron out the probability of glitches and staff carelessness triggering collisions. He also increased the number of signals between stations. This ensured that more trains could be accommodated between stations.

Before Nitish could take advantage of the safety fund, the Shining India slogan let down the NDA and Lalu Prasad took over as the next Railways Minister under the UPA Government. Lalu and his OSD sensed the opportunity that Nitish had opened up: more trains between stations. And the duo set about milking the Railways by overloading and pushing more trains on the same tracks. Lalu gathered accolades but never ever mentioned that it was his ex-colleague of the JP Movement days who had prepared the ground for Lalu's "success".

This over-use of the railway system was bound to slow strains. Train derailments have increased, prompting the Railways to once again think of bringing back Nitish Kumar's cess on railway tickets to fund safety efforts. 

Nitish was no saint. He is cut from the same populist cloth as Lalu. Some of his schemes as Railways Minister failed to take off such as the proposal for free food for children under five years on select trains. A few were partially successful such as the Jan Shatabdis: the fare suits the pocket of the common man but the running time is much more than their elite versions.

Lalu bequeathed a wrung-dry Bihar and the Railways to Nitish. The Bihar Chief Minister restored the health of both of them. The Bihar story is widely acknowledged. As railway projects have long gestation periods, Nitish's initiatives flowered during Lalu's tenure. The script is currently being written afresh. Nitish demitted office as the Railways Minister in 2004. Today Suresh Prabhu, another quiet and unassuming Minister in the Nitish mould, is once again implementing a long-term vision to restore the vitality of the Railways. It remains to be seen whether like Nitish, his will be an effort in the shadows.  

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