Lalua presents rail budget

[Gambit]

fhequbKB-bc :hysterical::hysterical:

[mhr123]

Gambo mind it :ridinghorse:... he was our CM before... now we r jharkhandies ............:D

[Desi Cartman]

good work by lalu ...

[THX_1138]

so is this really true? the railways are indeed a plant that reaps fruits for ages or was it another year of blundering losses and magnificient collapses of infrastructure? (not that i blame the railways, my grandfather was in assistant inspector general of the railways protection force in ajmer for most of his working years)... but still we could do with a little improvement every now and then...

[Gambit]

How Lalu turned around a near bankrupt dinosaur that was the Indian railways back in 2001 to an a$$ whooping Rs. 25,000 crore profit making government venture, one will never know!! Critics say that Lalu is reaping rewards of Paswan's/Bannerjee's groundwork 4-5 years ago back when the NDA govt were in power. Others say the turnaround was solely due to Lalu who introduced innovative competitive bidding, turnaround times, increased freight train capacity and leased ad spaces at competitive rates. Anyhow, salient points of this year's budget were: 3-7% fare reductions on passenger trains 53 new lines Service where tickets can be bought over mobile phones to be introduced soon 5% reduction in freight diesel and petrol prices An estimated $25 billion to be spent on upgradation and modernisation!

[cybervickey]

i dont know why ppl on these forums hate lalu,the pol forums are filled with hate aginst lalu , but lalu seems to be a genuine leader of the ordianary people of India!

[CC1981]

cyber, a lot of 'hate' for Lalu comes from his CM days of Bihar, where it was very very clear that he was a mega-scammer, getting rich off the public money,but with just enough caution to never get caught. When he did get into $hit, he put his wife as the CM and got out scot free..... But at the same time, Lalu deserves some credit for turning Indian Railways around from a drain on the govt. to a genuine moneymaker. I don't think Lalu is purely cashing in on the works of Paswan and Banerjee but i don't think he deserves all the credit either. The truth,as it usually is, is somewhere in between, where Paswan & Banerjee probably laid most of the groundwork and Lalu developed it more from there. Probably the singular biggest reason why IR is making money is because of increase in freight capacity and selling advertising space. But IR still has a long way to go- lot of the trains are packed tighter than sardines in a can,most of local trains have very poor hygene and most major cities don't have enough local or intra-city trains..but it sure is a step in the right direction.

[Ram]

I will play the cynic and say that I find it hard to believe that an organization that was running in the red for decades together could all of a sudden turn around and make billion dollar profits, with no transformational change in its business model. We have to bear in mind, IR is a public sector enterprise and one of its main purpose is to provide subsidized form of transport for the common man. That being the case, its kinda hard to rake in the kind of profits that Lalu is claiming. The profit/loss numbers have a lot to do with book-keeping and how the figures are reported. The same set of base numbers can be interpreted/reported in different ways to give starkly different results. I am suspecting this turnaround in the IR numbers has a lot to do with that. I may be totally wrong, IR might have turned around after all, but its kinda hard to buy it.

[Ram]

And while discussing names of former Railway ministers, I am kinda surprised people have left out Nitish Kumar's name. He did a lot of good work, IIRC.

[CC1981]

with no transformational change in its business model.

How on earth is prioritizing lines for freight and completely revaluing your advertisement space not a transformation of its business model ?!?? What else do you need to have transformational change ???

That being the case, its kinda hard to rake in the kind of profits that Lalu is claiming.

Nope, it is not hard. Public rail corps have done excellently in many nations- in Italy they make zillions of bucks and in Russia it is a major money earner- even in the Soviet days,one govt. organization that was making $hitload of money was railways. Railways can be profit oriented despite providing subsidized passenger transport, simply by maximizing on their advertising potential and making dedicated tracks for hauling freight- for which railways charge market price. Think of how many coaches railways have- tens of thousands- and a coach is fairly large, so each coach can rake in tons of money from painting adverts on them. Plus there are thousands upon thousands of railway stations and even a couple of billboards per station can equal billions of dollars in revenue per year. CN railways ( One of Canada's main railways) makes a killing on freight transport for example- one freight train for example, rakes in the equivalent revenue of 25 full passenger trains here- thats a stunning number really and goes on to show- if in a burgeoning economy with rising freight need ( the freight demand of india is doubling every 7 years), the railways can make a few dedicated lines ie, lines reserved ONLY for freight, which cuts down on freight cost a lot, since travel for freight is reduced massively if they have their own dedicated line- because unless it is military hardware transported, freight has the lowest priority in line crossings and junction release times. Since freight trains are a lot slower than passenger trains, when they have to share the same line, its the freight train that has to routinely stop and kill time at junctions, to let the speedier passenger trains through before resuming course. So dedicated freight lines are a very lucrative thing for manufacturers and retail outlets- for which they will pay 1.5x the price just because its still cheaper for them if the freight train doesn't take 5 times longer to arrive at their destinations. And don't forget- railways is 30-50% subsidized for public transport when it is a govt. institution in most countries. Which means it isn't free- you still pay a price for your ticket. And in a nation as India, which is #1 in railways use (by far, Indian railways has the largest customer base and network lines), even at subsidized fares, the total fare is a substantial amount-probably enough to pay for the bulk of railways' operational costs, thus making the money they make from adverts and freight as essentially profit. In conclusion, railways is one of the FEW industries, where it can subsidize a major part of its charter ( passenger transport) and STILL make zillions of dollars in profit, if and only if it is run efficiently.

[THX_1138]

has privatization of the railways been considered? i hope it is not... (more later, right now must rush to turn in a final assignment in ALB, now only 2 hours late).