Travelling from Anand to Ahmedabad on weekends during my
engineering days, the train used to invariably make an unscheduled halt just
before pulling into Maninagar station (the Borivali or Bandra Terminus of
Ahmedabad). The reason – chain pulling. Some milk vendors (as also some
bootleggers) who used to illegally cart their ware on these trains, would get
off at this place simply by giving a gentle tug to the chain hanging besides a
small notice which read: ‘TO STOP TRAIN PULL CHAIN’. And there it was, the grand
Indian Railways used to turn into someone’s ‘baap ki jaagir’.
Something similar happened yesterday, but this time it was
not the bootleggers, it was someone from the dreaded specie called ‘politician’.
It doesn’t matter that it was ‘didi’ this time (wait a minute, with all those
blackmails and tantrums being thrown day in and day out, I think it does matter)
because most other railway ministers who have held the portfolio before, have
treated the railways exactly like that – their ‘baap ki jaagirs’. But here was
a brave and sincere soul (by all means, a mutant of the specie mentioned above)
going by the name Dinesh Trivedi who tried to give railways the respect that it
deserves! The railway minister announced fare hike in his railway budget yesterday.
Considering the increasing levels of income of not only the middle class, but
across classes, the hike has been pretty small. Sample this: a hike of 5 paise
per kilometer in sleeper class and 10 paise per kilometer in AC 3 tier would
mean that the cost of travelling from Ahmedabad to Delhi would increase by `45 in sleeper class and by `90 in AC 3 tier.
But, this hike being small or affordable is not the reason
for me to call Mr. Trivedi sincere. It’s the justification that he has for it –
railways is in pitiable condition in terms of finances. And his special
emphasis is to channelize these additional funds towards making rail travel safer!
Simply put, Mr. Trivedi very sincerely intends that the next time when one of
us happens to travel by train, we do not end up as a mangled dead body inside a
train wreck! But for that he needs money. The railways needs money. And what is
the best of arranging money for your needs? You earn it. That’s exactly what
Mr. Trivedi is trying to do by hiking the fares. He is trying to make railways
self dependent. Alas, the likes of didi and lalu do not want that to happen. For
the sake of playing populist politics, they are ok to bleed the railways.
Honestly, I haven’t heard much about the political career of
Mr. Trivedi before. But going by the sincerity with which he was saying in a
post budget interview to a TV channel, that to him country and the interest of
railways is above everything else, one would be compelled to ponder that there
still are a few good men in the rotting political fiber of this country. I just
hope and pray that any later turn of events do not prove me wrong about my
sizing-up of Mr. Trivedi and his intentions. After all, politics, especially
Indian politics, is a dirty game. However, as this blog is being written, it’s flashing
on the news channels that Mr. Trivedi has resigned as the railways minister due
to pressure from his own party (read ‘didi’).
So much for trying to resist the chain pulling Mr. Railway
Minister!