Monday, March 04, 2013

MIXED SIGNALS

Mamata Banerjee is drawing flak for neglecting the ministry, but as a response to an RTI query from TSI (a Planman Media publication) shows, the railway minister isn't doing as badly as her immediate predecessors. A report by Vikas Kumar

If despair often blurs reality, chaos completely engulfs it. With the Indian Railways being rocked by another tragic mishap, the second in West Bengal in two months, that is exactly what supporters of mercurial Trinamool Congress leader and Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee, must be thinking. The feisty lady is being pilloried – and not entirely unjustifiably – by her political rivals for neglecting her ministerial work and focusing her energies on Bengal politics even as the railways under her charge lurches from one devastating wreck to another.

But the question is: is the 63,000-km stretch of the railways and the musty corridors of Rail Bhavan any worse off under her than they were under her predecessors of the past two decades?

The fact is that Mamata is running for cover. The Railway Ministry, which was adjudged the best performing ministry during the tenure of Lalu Prasad Yadav, has suddenly started hogging the limelight for all the wrong reasons. But what may be apparent is not always true. Going by cold statistics, Mamata certainly isn't the worst Railway Minister of the last two decades.

Data available with the Commissioner of Railway Safety for the period 1991 to 2010-11 shows that she has fared much better than her predecessors. During the tenure of CK Jaffer Sharief, who served as Railway Minister from July 21, 1991 to November 22, 1995, Indian Railways saw more than 500 accidents every year. The number of accidents in 1993-94 was 587, resulting in a death toll of 226. In the year prior to that, when two railway ministers, George Fernandes and Janeshwar Mishra, held the post, the number of mishaps was 532 and the death toll crossed 200.

Nitish Kumar, the current Bihar Chief Minister who loses no opportunity to take swipes at Mamata Banerjee for running the railways from Kolkata, seems to suffer from selective amnesia. During his tenure of almost a year, the number of fatalities was 374, which is the second highest during a single-year tenure of any railway minister. Similarly, with 302 fatalities, Lalu Prasad's record as railway minister is only marginally better. Mamata is fifth on the list of worst performers in terms of rail mishaps. When it comes to misusing the railways, Mamata's record is once again far better than that of her immediate predecessors. The Railway Ministry, in a response to an RTI query filed by TSI, gave out data of railway passes issued by respective railway ministers. This makes interesting reading and reflects the differing approaches of the ministers.

As far as free distribution of railway passes is concerned, Ram Vilas Paswan was generosity personified. During his one-and-a-half-year tenure from June 1, 1996 to December 29, 1997, he issued 597 complimentary rail passes. Of these, 445 were issued in the last year of his term.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2012.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
and Arindam Chaudhuri (Renowned Management Guru and Economist).

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