Uttar Pradesh polls: No rail budgets, but rail populism on

2016 decision to discontinue separate rail budgets was to eliminate 'populist culture', but remains a case of more of the same

After the publicity glitz of the inauguration of the Eastern Expressway by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last Tuesday, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) election strategists have turned their gaze on ushering in a rail and metro revolution of sorts in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh.

Thursday last, Alstom - the multinational mobility provider in India - delivered the first train to be run on the Kanpur metro. The company, by January, will also supply the first of the train sets that are to be operated on the Delhi-Ghaziabad-Meerut section being built under the Rapid Rail Transit System (RRTS) scheme.

Among the clutch of mainline rail projects targeted for completion by March 2021, the scheduled month of polling for the Assembly elections, include these: The 83-kilometre long Pilibhit-Shahjahanpur gauge conversion project; the 66-kilometre new line project connecting Utretia to Rae Bareli; the 40-kilometre line from Ghazipur to Annihar and the 188-kilometre electrification project from Ayodhya to Varanasi.

Rail Populism: Much of the same

The justification for the 2016 decision on discontinuing the 92-year-old practice of presenting a separate rail budget in Parliament had centred around arguments on the need to eliminate the "populist culture" of the past. Five years down the line, it is a case of being more of the same. Railways Ministers have been robbed of their hour of glory in Parliament, which has transferred to prominent political leaders, including the prime minister, who make big bang announcements from public platforms now and then - usually during the election campaign phases.

While the earlier railways ministers struggled for funds with the Finance Ministry or the Niti Aayog and were held accountable for their decisions, the ministry's internal - or external controls -have largely vanished now. Indeed, the verdict is still awaited on whether the merger of the rail budget with the country's main budget has helped achieve the proclaimed aims of infusing professionalism and efficiency in the affairs of India's public transporter.

The promised turnaround of the Indian Railways does not seem to have happened. On the drawing board remains the proposal for setting up an independent regulator to oversee rail operations. The plan to introduce commercial accounting practices has remained pending, and restructuring rail bureaucracy has been left unfinished.

In past years, the rail bureaucracy appears to have proceeded on some trial and error basis. Decisions on certain big-ticket projects have often been reversed, leading to time and cost overruns. Leadership issues, meanwhile, have continued to plague the transport behemoth. There were eight railways ministers during the UPA regime of ten years from 2004 to 2014, and the Narendra Modi government has only done slightly better. Current minister Ashwani Vaishnaw is the fourth railways minister of the NDA term after DV Sadananda Gowda, Suresh Prabhu and Piyush Goyal.

Addressing distortions

India's rail network is like a poorly rolled cigarette: thick in the middle and thin at the ends. The five states of UP, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar account for approximately half of the country's entire rail network of 67,956 route kilometres. In contrast, states including Odisha, Telangana, Kerala, Haryana and Chhattisgarh have lagged. Against 5829 route kilometres in Maharashtra, Punjab and Telangana have only 2265 kilometres and 1828 kilometres, respectively. Against 5301 route kilometres in Gujarat, Odisha and Kerala have only 2652 and 1045 kilometres, respectively. Against 5148 route kilometres in Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Chhattisgarh have only 1703 kilometres and 1152 kilometres, respectively.

The case can hardly be that all states must be at par in terms of rail network density. Decisions on launching projects or new trains ought to be ideally taken on assessment of demand and not because of political considerations. Uttar Pradesh, with 8808 route kilometres of the rail network - the country's highest - does not offer a case for special treatment at this stage. However, the pilot project is being implemented at the Kashi station to convert it into a multi-modal hub. The National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) is said to be working overtime for obtaining cabinet sanction on a new high-speed line connecting Delhi to Ayodhya, with a stopover at Varanasi. Projects worth thousands of crores are at various execution stages at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's parliamentary constituency of Varanasi.

Development as an electoral plank

The "development" plank has not quite revealed itself to be a potent electoral weapon. A whopping 5,50,000 kilometres of roads were built during the prime ministership of the late Atal Bihari Vajpayee, but the BJP still lost the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. From 1998 to 2003, the Congress government laid out an extensive network of roads in Rajasthan, but the BJP went on to win the 2003 Assembly elections. Similarly, the Telugu Desam Party government had constructed 8167 kilometres of roads between 1999 and 2004 but lost the 2004 Assembly elections in the then united Andhra Pradesh.

The case is hardly that developmental works are unimportant, or incumbent governments should not execute such projects. What can be suggested is that no political party can hope or expect to win elections on the strength of the development plank alone.

(Srinand Jha is a journalist)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.