Thursday, September 6, 2012

Giving clean shave to Railway development funds; Saving money or buying havoc?

People are not sure, what percentage of money from various development funds are actually spending for intended purpose. In this situation, what will happen if somebody is giving a shaving for the fund itself?

This is what exactly Indian Railways are doing now. According to reports "Indian Railways has cut its spending on asset replacement by about 15 per cent", "slashed the budget for the development fund (DF) by 20 per cent to Rs 2,991 crore" and "capital fund (CF) by 14 per cent to Rs 4,270 crore." Fortunately there is no cut in Railway Safety Funds – atleast for this year.

As we all know, tracks, bridges, trains, signal systems etc will not work forever. It required maintenance and replacement in prescribed intervals. Everything comes with an expiry date... So cutting the funds for asset replacement means people has to travel through expired tracks using expired trains. May be I am exaggerating, but train accidents are not uncommon...

I think it will be better to raise the charge for passenger tickets, which is anyway due for long time, instead of risking life.

References:

1. Railways cut spending on assets - Business Standard

For more reading

1. Railway Minister - Dinesh Trivedi - is going to resign for hiking passenger fares?
2. Indian Railway, Part I – A Race to Bottom
3. Indian Railway, Part II – Where we are going?
4. Indian Railway, Part III –  Accidents
5. Indian Railway, Part IV - Will the Pheonix rise again?

No comments:

Post a Comment