Gravy train

If the railway did not exist, it would have had to be invented. Not so much as an extremely valuable facility for transporting human bein...

If the railway did not exist, it would have had to be invented. Not so much as an extremely valuable facility for transporting human beings and material to various destinations, but as a never-ending source of political patronage.

The new bi-weekly Guwahati Rajdhani service, which began last week, is another startling example of just how politicians take this country for a ride. Rajdhanis, as they are generally understood, are superfast trains travelling on electrified, double-track routes. Train No 2435/2436, in contrast, although bearing the prestigious label of Rajdhani, chugs along at less efficient speeds on non-electrified single-track stretches and halts at no less than 10 destinations. Incidentally, the other Rajdhani that plies between Delhi and Guwahati thrice a week, halts at far fewer stations.

What8217;s obvious then is that at least some of the halts that the new train makes are dictated more by political expediency than the exigencies of efficient route-mapping.

It8217;s this ability to play Godand dispense favours to all and sundry that makes the post of railway minister a particularly coveted one. This is precisely why Mamata Banerjee, the stormy petrel of West Bengal politics, is so keen to capture the ministry for her party.

She is apparently convinced that this is the surest way to win the lasting affection and respect of the people of her state. Not one railway minister in recent times has been able to resist the temptation to use the offices of the railways to further his own political profile. So if Ram Vilas Paswan played Santa Claus to Hajipur, Ghani Khan Chowdhury was partial to Malda. If Pune was the destination Suresh Kalmadi favoured, Bangalore and Gwalior gained immensely from the Sharief and Scindia tenures.

But the tunnel vision that8217;s manifested in such an approach doesn8217;t help in the overall development of the railways. It was not always like this. In the past, rail ministers like Lal Bahadur Shastri had conducted themselves in a scrupulously honest and even-handed manner.Being accountable to the nation was so important to Shastri, that he didn8217;t hesitate even for a moment to hand over his resignation to Prime Minister Nehru, when news of a major rail mishap came in.

When Nitish Kumar, minister of railways, first took charge of this crucial ministry, with an annual budget of Rs 8,500 crore and which employs some 5.8 lakh people, he indicated that he was interested in rescuing the railways from the image it had acquired of being a universal provider.

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One of his first decisions was to get the railways to withdraw from the sticky business of railway recruitment 8212; instead the Railway Recruitment Control Board was deputed to oversee this process to ensure greater transparency. But the bi-weekly Rajdhani to Guwahati seems to indicate that he has changed track. Which bodes ill, not just for the railways, but the country.