Bharatiya Janata Party: The BJP government increased railway passenger fare by 14.2% and freight charges by 6.5%. How can this increment be justified?

India gave Modi an overwhelming majority precisely for taking such bold and unpopular moves. Everything that is good will start bitter. Eating Vegetables and exercising is always less preferable than watching TV while gulping soda.

Passenger segment of Indian railways loses Rs.26000 crores ($4 billion) every year. Part of this loss is met by high prices on freight, but overall there is still a shortage of Rs.10000 crores. This money has to come from somewhere.

Few options

1. Railways can stop investing in infrastructure and safety measures. More deaths, more accidents.
2. Railways can cut a few routes or stop creating new routes. This will affect accessibility of rural people, increase crowding on urban routes and make it even more hard buying a ticket.
3. Increase prices on freight. Part of the freight will switch to polluting lorries, putting more pressure on our roads and increasing the price of all commodities.
4. Take money from other parts of government budget. Of course we have things like education and space research where we can cut and shoot ourselves on the foot. We can also cut our defense budget when Middle East & Afghanistan is boiling over and China getting increasingly aggressive.
5. Increase the prices on railway fares of passengers.

Of the 5 options, the 5th is the one that is best, but is also most visible. The previous government took a combination of the first 4 and these take years to understand the trouble (not investing in safety will come back to bite 10 years later).

By
Balaji Viswanathan