Railway Ministry all about politics, not economics

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Source: www.ibnlive.com

No other ministry is as political as the Railway Ministry, for if one cannot give a train to his/her state and can not understand the art of distributing political largesse then that person cannot be the person heading the Rail Bhawan.

"Every single railway minister has sought to nurse his or her constituency," says political analyst Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.

For the past fifteen years it has been West Bengal and Bihar that have been showered by gifts in the form of new trains, stations and rail projects. The railway ministers are all strong regional players.

Ram Vilas Paswan was the railway minister from 1996 to 1998. Paswan is a Dalit leader from Bihar and an important face of Dalit politics in the country.

Present Chief Minister of Bihar Nitish Kumar held the railways portfolio twice - 1998-1999 and 2001-04.

Former chief minister of Bihar Lalu Prasad was the railways minister from 2004 to 2009.

Now aspiring chief minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee, is the Railways Minister now. She also held the portfolio from 2000 to 2001.

Little wonder then that the white paper on Indian railways was not a document on its financial health but a whitewash of the profit claims and turnaround of Mamata's predecessor Lalu Prasad.

"It is a black paper not a white one," was how Lalu reacted to Mamata'w white paper.

From taking charge at the Eastern Railways Headquarters in Kolkata to planning a rail coach factory on the abandoned Singur Tata land to free lifetime passes to artists from West Bengal, now even the three petals of the Trinamool Congress symbol have found a place in railway advertisement.

"Initiatives are narrow state specific and reflect the cheap political assertions," says CPI MP D Raja.

The result is that Bihar rail projects have been ignored and Rail Bhawan reduced to Mamata's Delhi workstation.