(Ashok Malik is a columnist and writer living in Delhi)In numerical terms, the partial roll-back of train fare hikes by the Narendra Modi government was not very significant. It negated 14 per cent of the proposed quantum of increase and retained 86 per cent. Nevertheless it offered a telling lesson to the new government and to Modi himself. Despite the single-party majority, despite the mood for change, despite the prime minister's exhortation that the country should prepare for "hard decisions", a regional ally, a city-specific consumer constituency and concerns about an upcoming state election led to the roll-back.
This is not Modi's instinct. In Gujarat, he spent his first 12-18 months raising power tariffs and fixing the electricity infrastructure in the state. This was unpopular in the short run but paid dividends in the longer term and contributed to more reliable power supply as well as Modi's victory in 2007. Modi would no doubt want to repeat the formula in New Delhi, but the Shiv Sena's worry about alienating suburban train commuters in the Mumbai metropolitan area, with only a few months to go for the Maharashtra assembly election, could not be ignored.
Is there a way out or is economic reform forever hostage to India's cycle of unending elections? If Modi is to get over this hump, there are two things he needs to do. First, he has to use his prowess as a communicator to reach out to people and speak about his policy changes and his tough measures.
During the Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt used his "Fireside Chats" - a series of radio addresses - to speak directly to the American people and explain his difficult economic and social policy choices. Modi, the most artful communicator of his generation in Indian politics, needs to address the citizen more often and more directly, bypassing the filter of the media. Essentially, he needs to take a device he used with such effect during his campaign into his governance as well. That is the only manner in which he can set the agenda, otherwise the media will attempt to set the agenda for him.
Second, Modi needs to use his commitment to the power of state governments and to federalism to rescue the Union government and national policy-making from the tyranny of provincial and city politics. This will not be easy but institutional changes - packaged into Modi's promise to transfer more and authority to state governments - could help.
Take Indian Railways. Should a long-term programme for renewal be held to ransom by the suburban network of say Mumbai or Kolkata? Does this make sense? Indian Railways' mandate is to carry freight and passengers across long distances - Thiruvananthapuram to Patna or Amritsar to Bangalore, to use random examples. Yet, over 50 per cent of the 25 million passengers Indian Railways carries every day are suburban commuters.
Indian Railways runs 12,000 passenger trains. Some 5,200 of these are intra-city or suburban trains in largely the Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata metropolitan areas. Only 2,600 mail and express train fulfil Indian Railways' primary role - transporting Indians long distances across the country and between big cities, at fairly rapid speeds. As the Sam Pitroda Committee, which studied rail modernisation, pointed out, 40 per cent of rail infrastructure carries about 80 per cent of traffic.
Is there a way out? Key to any reform and restructuring of Indian Railways should be a plan to hive off suburban train services and hand them to local authorities. In other countries of a comparable size, from China to the United States, suburban trains are run by local authorities and state/provincial governments, usually as part of an integrated public transport mechanism. New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority is a well-known example.
As such, in the years to come, Indian Railways should set up separate corporations for commuter train services in Chennai, Kolkata and Mumbai. The Union government should offer a one-time financial package for technology upgrade and transfer ownership and management of these corporations and their assets, and of suburban train networks, to state governments. Let the state governments then deal with the issue of fare hikes and passenger amenities.
On the other hand, let Indian Railways focus on long-distance traffic, on modern signalling and enhancement of tracks. As for the tracks, even if publicly owned, they can allow for the running of both government and private passenger trains. Indian roads and highways are public property, but the buses that run on them can be privately-owned or owned by a government undertaking. Why should train tracks be any different?
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