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Lalu narrates Railway success story

“We have succeeded in breaking the privatisation myth ”

New Delhi: Upgradation plans peppered with the recipe for a staple food item and anecdotes from rural India caught the fancy of diplomats as Railway Minister, Lalu Prasad, narrated to them the now familiar story of the turnaround of the Indian Railways.

Mr. Prasad told the diplomats that international investors were offering loans to the Indian Railways at cheaper interest rates than they offer them to corporates.

“We have succeeded in breaking the myth that privatisation is the panacea to all the problems faced by government-run entities,” he said in his address to diplomats and Indian Foreign Service probationers at the Foreign Service Institute here.

Speaking in Hindi, the Minister claimed that his biggest achievement was reduction in travel fares when there were recommendations by various committees to increase it by 30 per cent.

Mr. Prasad said he took up the “challenge” of making the Railways a profitable venture at a time when it was mired in huge debts. “I did not increase the fares. I did not retrench employees. Instead I gave them a bonus. I took the traders into confidence. I also took the employees into confidence,” he said.

He also spelt out his “vision” for the Railways, of freight corridors, world-class stations and facilities for farmers at railway stations across the country.

“We will set up ‘krishi’ outlets on railway stations. It is a pity that we sell shoes in air-conditioned showrooms and food grains on the footpath,” he said.

Mr. Prasad said his ministry had already initiated surveys for exploring the possibility of running high-speed trains between Chennai and Mumbai.

He admitted that maintaining such high-speed corridors was an expensive proposition.

The Minister also noted that the trains in most European countries had all the comforts to offer but the rail services were running losses, despite subsidies being offered, due to less number of travellers.

“You have expensive trains, but two people alight the train and three others board it. The passenger traffic is much less [compared with India],” he added.

Mr. Prasad said his Ministry was mulling over the introduction of aluminium coaches for goods trains. —PTI

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