NEW DELHI, FEBRUARY 25: In what has by now become par for the course, debutant Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee, on Friday presented a budget which spared the heavily-subsidised passenger traffic, increased rates on the over-stretched cargo traffic by close to Rs 600 crore, and continued the time-honoured practice of drawing down of the Railways reserves, this time by a whopping Rs 1,421 crore. And yes, she also introduced a slew of new trains - as with her predecessors, several of them (6 of the 25) were meant to benefit her home state of West Bengal. Not surprisingly, at the end of her presentation, MPs from other states - most of them from Uttar Pradesh and Kerala - entered the well of the House, shouting slogans that Mamata had presented a railway budget for Bengal.Probably not wanting to appear as favouring only Bengal, she did something that no railway minister has ever done. She announced two new trains for Kerala there and then. Incidentally, she also announced a new train from Mumbai to Madurai which was not a part of the written budget speech. According to sources, Mamata decided to include it at the last minute.With railway accidents on the increase, Mamata has increased the allocation for track renewal by as much as Rs 2,000 crore, and about 26 per cent for signalling. But with the railways losing out in market share - the freight earnings were short of the target by Rs 250 crore this year - its surpluses continue to be under pressure. Against the budget target of a revenue surplus of Rs 1,543 crore, the revised estimate for 1999-00 is Rs 899 crore, and the target for 2000-01 is Rs 1,176 crore.Mamata has squared the circle - increased subsidies and increased outlays without significantly increased revenues - by drawing down from the pension and depreciation reserves of the Railways. In 1998-99, the Railways drew down reserves by Rs 2,313 crore (or Rs 1,000 cr more than originally envisaged), and this is to be drawn down further by Rs 1,421 crore in 2000-01. The Railways will also borrow Rs 3,668 crore from the market to meet their expenditure burden.Keeping the rapid strides made in Information Technology, Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee plans a host of measures to make the railways more IT savvy, and hopes to benefit consumers by this. Some of the areas that have been taken up include: an internet-based enquiry system for information on train time-table. A national train enquiry system for disseminating real-time information regarding passenger train running is being developed and is likely to be implemented soon. Booking on internet through smart card facility will be introduced shortly. Internet-based reservation using credit cards will also be made available after passing of the cyber laws by the Parliament.
