Railways

Rail accident – A non-functioning Railway Minister

The assignment of the Railway Minister in India has been a political post for quite some time. The Railways is a huge provider of support, in the form of the number of people it employs, the amount of purchasing it does, the amount of material it carries, and of course, carrying people all over the country. Further, deciding on the number of trains that a particular state has, as well as the location of new establishments that the Railways setups (train manufacturing facilities, training institutes, etc) gives immense power to a minister to gain public support. As a result, the post of the Railways Minister has been one that has been sought after by a number of people in the past. Most of them have been from the Eastern side of the country, with Laloo Prasad Yadav and Nitish Kumar from Bihar, and Mamta Banerjee from West Bengal. Apart from the time of Nitish Kumar, when he was considered to have set in process a system of reform, the other 2 ministers are remembered for increasing the number of trains to their home states. When Laloo Prasad Yadav was the minister, he was projected to have turned over the railways and made huge revenue, but when Mamta Banerjee became the next minister, she revealed how Laloo Prasad Yadav had actually fudged a lot of figures and that the profit he had shown was ephemeral, not something that was sustainable.
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Court asks as to why Government should not pay for bandhs and strikes that cause losses

In the recent pasts, the northern states of India have seen agitations and strikes that have caused a huge amount of inconvenience to the general population. The protests by Gujjars, and then by the Jat community, demanding reservations in jobs have seen blockades of roads and trains, stopping the flow of goods and people across many states and national highways. For example, the Jat agitation centered on putting pressure on the Government in Delhi and blocked many of the highways around the national capital, and the protesters squatted on train tracks, preventing movement of trains for many days. And given the political strength of the community and its importance as a vote bank, no Government dared to take any drastic action to ensure that the agitation did not result in inconvenience. Calling rallies and protesting for getting reservation is fine, but stopping the flow of goods and people amounts to acting against the economic interests of the country. The responsibility of the State and the Central Government is to ensure that such acts do not impede the rights of people, but they failed miserably as usual.
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Railways fined for ticket issued for wrong date

Till some time back, the various Government run PSU’s and other departments always felt that they were not providing a service that could be challenged in court; that options such as consumer laws were only possible to be implemented if people had taken a service from a private company. It was only when they started getting castigated and losing cases in consumer forums and courts did the Government undertakings realize that they were also subject to the same laws and conditions as anybody else. And of course, as the economy opened up, and there was increased competition, this competition also drove the Government run departments to either shape up or lose out. The Railways has opened up somewhat and improved, but still there needs to be more improvement, as can be seen from this case:

AHMEDABAD: A consumer court has asked the Western Railway to pay Rs 6000 to a commuter for issuing journey ticket for wrong date and not cancelling the same. The court held that verification of details in ticket is primarily the railway staffers’ responsibility.

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