The
Centre of Indian Trade Unions(CITU) expressed serious concern at the
BJP Govt’s first Railway Budget, 2014-15 which declares its dependence
on so called public private partnership, private investment including
FDI for funding its infrastructural and capacity augmentation projects.
It reflects nothing but continuity of the same pro-corporate policy of
the much discredited Congress Regime, rather in more aggressive form.
Just
weeks before the Railway Budget, steep hike in passenger fares and
freight charges to the tune of 14.2% and 6.5 % respectively exposed the
brazen undemocratic as well as anti-people modus operandi of the BJP
Govt. Added to this is the budgetary announcement of linking the future
prices of travel with fuel adjustment factor which will result in
virtual deregulation of railway fares providing for automatic increase
in railway fares with the increase in price of fuel. This is nothing but
an arrangement for perpetual increase of burden on common people.
Further,
the thrust on PPP, FDI and outsourcing in various segments of railway
operation and services as outlined in the current Railway Budget, is
going to make the situation worse. Despite abject failure of the same
exercise on depending on PPP route for infrastructural expansion and
services during the UPA regime as reflected in plan expenditure in
2013-14 falling short by a whopping “Rs 59,359 crore from the target due
to non-materialisation of PPP targets”, the Modi Govt also preferred to
stick to the same provenly failed route. This means, either the
expansion work will suffer or the private investors’ lobby will extract
more undue concessions from the Govt in the process of their response,
finally increasing the burden on the common people. Precisely, that had
been the past experience of all PPP projects in sea-ports, airports,
roads etc during the UPA’s tenure which increased the burden on the
consumers and the people in a big way.
Despite
admitting in the budget the abject failure of the Railways to implement
the declared and sanctioned projects even to an insignificant extent,
resulting in huge accumulation of unfulfilled projects announced in
successive budgets, the current Budget failed to present any concrete
roadmap for their execution except giving sound bites on prioritization,
time frame etc. Even the new announcements made in the current budget
do not have appropriate budgetary back-up, rendering them to be
deceptive in real sense.
The
Budget sounded high on Govt’s commitment to safety, but kept absolute
silence about filling up around 3 lakh vacancies in the Railways,
majority of which are related to management and maintenance of safety
standards in railway operation.
CITU
records its condemnation to this anti-people and privatization oriented
Railway Budget and calls upon the working people to voice their protest
against such retrograde exercise of the Modi Govt.