| With the Railways keeping passenger fares and freight tariffs unchanged, the question of raising capital to fund upgradation and modernisation initiatives has assumed significance. Railway Board Chairman R K Singh has said it is more prudent to improve the quality of services to push up revenues than just increasing tariffs. Excerpts:
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| What are the main thrust areas in the Railway Budget?
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| Our guiding principle in the Budget has been the Common Minimum Programme (CMP). We have identified improvement in infrastructure, modernisation and renovation as thrust areas, along with improving cleanliness in railway stations and passengers amenities. In addition, we have also taken measures to plug leaks in revenue.
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| The Budget has not increased the passenger fare and freight rates, barring the marginal increase in parcel costs. How will you generate the required revenue?
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| The reasoning that increasing fares and freight charges leads to an increase in revenue is misleading. We have learnt from experience that whenever fares or freight costs have been increased, the traffic has come down.
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| Hence, we have decided that it is a more prudent move to improve the quality of services to push up volumes and improve revenue rather than touch fares.
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| In fact, the marginal increase in parcel cost has been done on account of financial constraints, since we have incurred a loss of nearly Rs 800 crore in parcel and luggage traffic last year.
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| The Railway Budget has projected a mere three per cent increase in passenger traffic. What measures are being taken to increase this?
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| Last year, we had projected a three per cent growth in passenger traffic and we were able to achieve that. If you look at the growth in passenger traffic in other countries, a three per cent growth is satisfactory.
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| But we are not satisfied with this growth. Hence, we are looking into issues such as the punctuality of passenger trains and changing the time-table of passenger trains to make them more convenient.
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| Some states in the Northeast have complained to the petroleum ministry about the paucity of railway wagons for carrying petroleum products.
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| We have provided enough wagons to supply oil products to the Northeast and no such complaint has been received by us. In fact, our wagons for carrying oil products are not being used.
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| We are taking this issue up at the highest level. We have already appraised Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister P Chidambaram of the issue.
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| While the Budget talks of passenger safety, how do you propose to tackle the increasing threat of terrorist attacks in sensitive states like Jammu and Kashmir?
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| We are very much alive to the issue, and I would like to inform you that a meeting has been convened by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh tomorrow to discuss measures to deal with the issue of security threat. We will also be taking up this issue with the state government and are expecting concrete action to be taken within the next week or so.
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| You have proposed a 10 per cent rebate in the freight for heavy machinery. Are there any projections of how much this rebate will result in increase in freight traffic?
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| We have found that there are a large number of restrictions on the movement of heavy machinery for thermal power stations and other industries. We have not made any projections since the movement of such machinery through rail is very marginal.
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| But we are hopeful that companies like BHEL will use this rebate to undertake their movement of machines through rail.
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| The Budget has not talked about mopping up revenue through sale of its surplus land?
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| Over the last 7-8 years, we have experienced that our surplus land has not yielded us any revenue. We have been trying to sell these lands but not been able to find buyers.
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| We had even appointed Ircon (Indian Railways Construction International Ltd) but nothing had happened. We are now considering appointing a rail and land development authority. |
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