The editorial, "Rebooting railways" (September 22), sets the pace for "what the railways should be doing to improve their functioning in a holistic manner" -a far more important agenda than merely shedding the 92-year-old legacy of the Raj era.
Shedding the Railway Budget legacy is a great start. Any prudent and objective government must keep reviewing old practices, which are mostly followed because "we have always done it like this".
Practices that have become unproductive and irrelevant must be discarded, just as we have started repealing some of the redundant historic laws that have no bearing on the running of the country at present.
Presenting a separate Railway Budget was an anomaly; I am happy it has now been discontinued. Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu's comment in this context must be lauded.
The annual Union Budget is now practically an exercise in bookkeeping; it is no longer a means to bring about drastic changes in direct and indirect taxes and, possibly, help some companies.
Hopefully, the secrecy of the annual exercise, including the quarantining of key finance ministry officials for several days, would also stop. The Budget is essentially a reconciliation of income and expenditure and apportioning of provisions for various schemes aimed at nation-building. We don't need to do it secretly and then make dramatic announcements on the last day of February.
The ritual has no meaning now. Instead, we should be fixing targets for every ministry and then comparing these with the actual achievement and rewards/penalties for good performance and non-performance. As the government is becoming more businesslike and objective there is a need to evolve and change based on ground realities.
With the proposed dedicated freight corridors, the railways must get in shape to meet the challenges and the competition it would probably face from airlines and waterways transportation for passenger and freight movement. Right steps in the era of market economy.
Krishan Kalra Gurgaon
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