Railway Budget Speech -- ‘re-birth of Indian Railways’,

New Delhi: Presenting his maiden Railway Budget, Rail Minister Suresh Prabhu on Thursday said that Rs 8.5 lakh crore will be invested in Railways over 5 years.

Outlining his vision for Indian Railways, Suresh Prabhu in his budget speech talked about four main goals that PM Narendra Modi government will work on to get railways out of its abysmal state.

“We want to work on these four goals; to deliver a sustained improvement in customer experience; make railways a safer means of travel; modernise infrastructure of railways and expand capacity and finally make railways financially self-sustainable,” Prabhu ellaborated.

Stating that his government can ensure the ‘re-birth of Indian Railways’, Prabhu said, “I am convinced we can deliver. I believe we can ensure the rebirth of Indian Railways.”

“However, this cannot happen overnight,” Prabhu said. Prabhu said that chronic underinvestment has led to poor development of Indian Railways. Prabhu said that Railways can play a very important role in PM Narendra Modi’s ambition of eliminating poverty from the country.

“I thank people for giving me this opportunity. PM challenged us when he talked about the need for about poverty elimination,” Prabhu said. “This is an organisation that touches the heart of all Indians. Railways can play a prime role in PM’s dream of eliminating poverty from India.”

Ahead of his speech Suresh Prabhu presented a ‘white paper’ on Railways in Lok Sabha.

Ahead of the Railway Budget, Suresh Prabhu had said that it will signal the direction of long-term reforms needed to revamp the world’s fourth-largest rail network.

“The budget will set the direction of long and difficult road of reform,” Prabhu had said.

While announcing a slew of sops for passengers, including no hike in passenger fares, Prabhu said that the major focus was on ensuring ‘clean railways’.

Following Prime Minister Modi’s footsteps of ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’, Prabhu said that 17,000 toilets would be replaced by bio-toilets. “This year alone we intend to replace 17000 more toilets by bio-toilets,” he said. He added that his ministry aims to construct new toilets in 650 additional stations.

Regarding the linen available onboard trains he said, “We will increase number of mechanised laundry. Cleanliness of bed linen and laundry is key.” The Indian Railways has approached NIFT for new Linen designs.

The ministry plans to set up a special department called ‘Swach Rail’ which will exclusively look after the cleanliness of the Indian Railway.

Rs 6581 crore has also been alloted for safety in Indian railways.

Giving due importance to cleanliness Prabhu said, “Railways is your travelling home, please keep it clean.”

Chief among the other proposals is to offer SMS alert services to inform passengers of delay and departure timings for trains.

Such a facility will be particularly useful for citizens in North India when fog season means inevitable delays and cancellations. Nearly all important stations in North India such as Delhi, Lucknow, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Jodhpur, Jaipur, etc end up facing train delays and cancellations due to fog, and in such a scenario a prior SMS alert system will help ensure that most don’t end up at the station only to find out that their train has been cancelled.

It remains to be seen how those who are not booking online and thus not giving their mobile number when reserving a ticket will get such alerts.

Another major announcement by Prabhu was that the government is developing a mobile application to address complaints of people with regard to railways. Such an application sounds like a great idea, given that the railways in India are woefully lacking in passenger amenities. It would have been more helpful if the Minister given details on how the app will help in dealing with the complaints.

The Minister also announced that charging facilities for mobile phones would be extended in all trains and stations. He added that the number of mobile phone charging points would be increased in general coaches as well. This will come as great news to most passengers, especially those who find themselves frequently commuting to different cities for work, since most users these days are dependent on their mobiles for work too.

In order to make ticketing more passenger friendly the Budget has also proposed “operation five minutes” for issuing unreserved tickets, hot buttons, coin vending machines, concessional e-tickets for differently abled travelers, for booking tickets a multi-lingual e-portal will be developed.

Crediting of refunds through banks and unreserved tickets on Smart phones will be available. Proliferation of automatic ticket vending machines with smart cards and currency options, integrated ticketing system on the lines of rail-cum-road tickets, Defence Travel System developed for elimination of Warrants have also been proposed in the Budget.

Another good-Internet linked initiative that was announced is that food can be ordered from the IRCTC website at the time of booking. The Minister said that, “E-catering has been introduced on some trains on experimental basis, depending on the response, it will be extended.”

He also announced that the government plans to create a a multilingual e-ticketing system which will be encouraging for those might not be comfortable in English.

With regard to WiFi, facilities will be provided at 400 stations including Category B stations. Recently the Delhi railway station got WiFi.

In Delhi, the WiFi is free of cost for an initial period of 30 minutes after which users are required to register for the same using their mobile phones. Beyond 30 minutes, users have to purchase scratch cards costing Rs 25 for 30 minutes and Rs 35 for an hour and valid for 24 hours. Users can buy them at Wi-Fi helpdesks on the concourse at the Paharganj and Ajmeri Gate sides of the railway station.

The Minister also proposed the development of an integrated customer portal for passengers to have ease of information and ticketing. The minister has also made a move towards encouraging paperless ticketing.

The initiatives, some of which promise mobile facility and as well as easier services via the Internet are much needed. They are also in-line with the Prime Minister’s recent remark at an e-governance conference where he said that, “While we look at e-Governance, let us think about ‘mobile first’ and thus give importance to m-Governance (mobile governance). I urge you to explore ways to provide as many services as possible through mobiles. Let us bring the world into our mobile phones!”

As we had noted earlier, India is all set to become the second largest smartphone market in the world, and we are currently second largest country in terms of numbers of mobile users (this includes feature and smartphones) in the world, thus e-governance cannot afford to overlook mobile first.  While facilities like Banking, Bill Pay, LPG cylinder payments, tax payments, and even checking passport status is available to smartphone users, those who can’t afford such devices should not be left out of the mobile governance revolution.

Hopefully the Railways will ensure that the regular users, the one who can’t afford smartphones but have a mobile are not left behind as it offers more mobile-based services.