Nine thrust areas for Rly Minister

Girja Shankar Kaura

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, February 26

It was an unusual way to start a Rail Budget speech. But Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu is always known to charter his own path and be a perfectionist in whatever he does. Outlining his vision for Indian Railways, the minister identified nine thrust areas for Railway Budget 2015.

They are - Indian Railways to become prime mover of economy once again; resource mobilization for higher Investments; decongestion of heavy haul routes and speeding up of trains: emphasis on gauge conversion, doubling, tripling and electrification; project delivery; passenger amenities; safety; transparency and system improvement; railways as the preferred mode of transport for the masses; and sustainability.

It was no surprise that he began by saying what ails Indian Railways. “Facilities have not improved substantially for the past few decades which is the result of under-investment that affects capacity, leading to poor morale. This fed into vicious cycle of chronic under-investment for a long time”, he said.

“This must be put to an end,” said the chartered accountant-turned-politician, while presenting the budget. “We have to make our Indian Railways a benchmark organisation in safety, security and infrastructure,” he said in a speech peppered with several Hindi couplets.

Playing with words, he invoked God (Prabhu) and said: “One of the first things I asked, ‘hey prabhu’ how will all this be possible.” Then, he went on to say that he took it upon the mortal ‘Prabhu’ to accomplish the task ahead.

Earlier, the minister presented a white paper on Indian Railways, which he said would form a trilogy of what plans he had in mind for one of the largest such networks in the world along with his budget for 2015-16 and a vision 2030 document to be presented later in the year.

Spelling out a five-point execution strategy for transforming Indian Railways, Prabhu said that he would focus on leveraging additional resources and building partnerships.

For the record, India boasts of one of the oldest and the largest railroad networks in the world, ferrying some 23 million people, or a population the size of Australia, as also 2.65 million tonnes of goods on its coaches, each day.