The Nation: Railways; In the Red Against the Reds

Indian railways is broke and is facing its worst financial crisis. But it is still a useful weapon for Mamata Banerjee to score points against her left rivals. Can she rise above politics and fix the mess?

Mamata Banerjee is earnest, audacious and a proven streetfighter. Now as the Union minister for railways, she must prove that she can also be an effective administrator. Just two months in the ministry which she demanded as the price for joining the NDA Government and Mamatadi has made it clear that she will use the largest employer in the country and the second largest rail network in the world as a weapon against her red foes.

MAMATA'S FAST TRACK

New Trains: She's announced as many as four for Bengal besides sanctioning Rs 31 crore for a facelift of Howrah and Sealdah stations.
Austerity Drive: Across-the-board cut in administration expense, 30 per cent cut publicity budget. She leads from the front by refusing all perks of office.
Private Funds: She's set up a task force to mobilize private investment in infrastructure. Selling surplus railway land and joint ventures in platform maintenance on the anvil.

In other words, Mamata has boarded the Rajdhani Express to Calcutta, hoping it will terminate not at Howrah Junction but just across the Hooghly river at West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu's office in Writer's Building. Her Trinamool Congress has become the rallying point for all opposition to the entrenched Left Front in West Bengal. If Mamata gains in stature she could put up a good show when assembly elections are held less than two years hence. That is her destination.

Little wonder that the pugnacious lady has reserved most of her energies for scoring points in the state. While the rest of India gets one new train -- the Indore Inter-city Express -- West Bengal gets four. Mamata has also announced a Rs 31 crore plan for the beautification of Howrah and Sealdah -- renamed Kolkata by her -- stations. There's even a "package within a package" for north Bengal. Besides work on Calcutta's metro rail being expedited and expanded, the city has also been promised six new railway reservation counters. But ask Mamata if she is showering undue favours on West Bengal and the reply is: "I have acted only where there is a need." Clearly, the minister is hypersensitive to the needs of the state.

Mamata would not be a grassroots politician if she did not nurture her constituency. And certainly not a constituency that still remembers Congressman and former railway minister A.B.A. Ghani Khan Chowdhury for the largesse he showered on Bengal. Chowdhury's hometown Malda, earlier famous only for mangoes, became known for its railway station after his stint as railway minister in the early '80s. From then to the present Lok Sabha, Chowdhury has never lost from Malda. He is a role model for Mamata.

But the Union minister for railways must come to terms with the fact that she is not merely West Bengal's minister for railways. After the hurly-burly of her early days in office, Mamata is trying to give some sort of national perspective to her handling of the ministry. In the process she is discovering that the train she has boarded to breach the red citadel is itself in the red. The cash strapped railways with a budget of over Rs 30,000 crore is in a financial mess. With the diesel price hike imposing an additional Rs 700 crore burden, the 1999-2,000 scenario looks grim. Mamata herself admits: "I know things are bad. But I have learnt that in my life I can achieve nothing without a struggle."

In Delhi's Rail Bhavan, Mamata has set a grand example of austerity -- she does not use the official car and arrives at office in a beat-up Fiat wearing rubber slippers, her trademark cotton sari and now, as the winter chill descends on Delhi, a coarse, black shawl. "I don't take even a piece of toast from the railways," says the woman who is making an impression on her bureaucrats by spending long hours in office. But Mamata's slice of bread, even if it is not buttered, hardly makes a difference.

There are more substantive steps she has taken to mobilise funds. There's a 30 per cent cut in the publicity budget. And no more complimentary passes from the ministers' quota "except for deserving organisations like the Ramakrishna Mission and the Missionaries of Charity" -- both respected institutions in Bengal.

Occasionally, she does see beyond Calcutta. She has set up a task force to interact with industry and public-sector units to mobilise resources. "This is a crisis year. We have to use unconventional means," she says. She also talks of safety. Of the 43,000 level crossings, 22,000 are unmanned. Mamata reveals that after the terrible train accident at Gaisal last year, the Safety Review Committee recommended an additional Rs 15,000 crore for safety measures. "There's no sign of the money," she laments.

Besides, "tracks are in a bad shape and modernisation not up to date", she says. Mamata is hoping to get industry to invest money. The Confederation of Indian Industry has already responded by calling for private sector participation. The railways are getting into joint ventures with private industry to maintain stations. "We shall overcome," says Mamata, inadvertently using a phrase associated with her red rivals.

It won't be easy. The past few railway budgets, in years when elections were always round the corner, merely juggled figures and passed the burden to the next regime. Populist concerns have stopped ministers from hiking passenger fares while freight charges have been pushed to uneconomical levels. The result is that the grand old Indian Railways is chugging along to nowhere while India's diesel-choked roads are now carrying the bulk of the goods traffic. "We are facing a big threat from surface transport," says Mamata.

That is one reason why she was keen that Ajit Panja, her party nominee for a minister of state portfolio, be placed in surface transport. One of her MPs reveals: "She also wanted to improve the bad roads in West Bengal." Unfortunately, the bjp leadership did not oblige. Mamata merely says, "It is the prime minister's prerogative."

She is also miffed at being saddled with two ministers of state -- the first time in the ministry. But she says, "I come from a large family. I can adjust. As long as they are here to work and have no other agendas." The Janata Dal(U)'s first-time minister Digvijay Singh is savvy and smart enough to have realised that "the railways is such a vast organisation that it's very difficult to make a mark. You only create the impression of doing something". The bjp's Bangaru Laxman, inducted in the recent cabinet expansion, is more candid: "I don't know much as yet. I've just taken charge."

Mamata, meanwhile, is beginning to cotton on to the fact that she is heading not just a cash-starved organisation but a very corrupt one. Recently a file was placed before her suggesting she terminate the services of an employee caught taking a Rs 100 bribe. Her response: "Let the man go with a warning. Why persecute him for Rs 100 when there are people here who make crores?"

Hardly surprising in a organisation that tots up purchases of Rs 7,000-8,000 crore annually. As powerful cartels of suppliers operate in connivance with the bureaucracy, Mamata will have a battle when she tries to open railway tenders to provide opportunities for the light engineering industry of West Bengal. But the biggest challenge will be to balance the budget. Will she raise passenger or freight charges? Mamata is still figuring that one out. "The burden will not be on the people," is all she says.

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