Author: aitc

Sir, Darjeeling Himalayan Railway is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site popularly known as “The Mountain Railways of India.” The passenger train that was in operation from Darjeeling to Kurseong on a daily basis is nonoperational since 2019. It had served till then as the lifeline for the hill community apart from being a huge tourist attraction. I humbly request the hon. Railway Ministry to urgently look into the matter and restore the railway services between Kurseong and Darjeeling. Thank you, Sir.

Sir, I thank you for this opportunity …(Interruptions)… Sir, I thank you for this opportunity to make just a few short points on the Railway Budget. …(Interruptions)… The first thing that I would like to draw the hon. Railway Minister’s attention…(Interruptions)… आप मेरा समय क्यों बरबाद कर रहेहैं? The first thing that I would like to draw the
attention of the hon. Railway Minister, who has a wide background of administration, is that half the railway passengers in India on a daily-basis are just from three suburban railways. The three suburban railways constitute half the daily passengers of India. With this in mind, if half the passengers or even 45 per cent of the passengers are suburban passengers of Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and others, they have never got even one per cent of the Railway Budget. They go packed like animals, they hang out like birds. This sort of a shameful treatment of suburban railway passengers must end during your tenure, Mr. Railway Minister. You can take a look at that. So that is the first point I am making that suburban railways have always been neglected except in very brief periods. So please look at suburban railways as a special project. The problem is, though he has one of the finest cadres of traffic, accounts, mechanical, electrical, one of the finest cadres, yet most of them consider suburban railways to be a pain, to be unprofitable. Now you cannot have profitability everywhere. We don’t have profitability in MGNREGA. We don’t have profitability in ‘Food for Work’, in food aid. So, treat it as a social sector project. My first request is,
you will be catering, in one stroke, to 50 per cent of the daily passengers of India. Please take a fresh look at it.
The second point I would like to make is NMP. The National Monetization Pipeline scheme is a cloud wrapped within an enigma, wrapped within a mystery. Please come out transparently. Railways are too important and too risky to be leased out even for a short while to private profiteers. You are talking of leasing 1,400 kms. I cannot travel in a Rajdhani wondering whether the next 100 kms. of tracks are being maintained by a profiteer. Please, please clarify, where you are doing it, on what grounds you are doing it. Every feet of railway line has to be
maintained and they are doing a splendid job out of it, but in spite of that, accidents happen. So please be careful; Railways are the lifeline of India. Before you lease out anything of the railways, please be more transparent.
Let it be in the public domain. Your Budget is Rs.1.5 lakh crores. Your net worth is more than the Government of India’s Budget. You are an aristocratic department, come out transparently. Don’t play behind screens. So my second point is on NMP. You are leasing out 400 stations. Which 400 stations? Who is in-charge of what? Who is in-charge of signaling? Who is in-charge of delays? Who is in-charge of other things? The Railways are the heart of the administration of India. Do not play around with it. If you have to lease, if you have to earn money, build supermarkets over railway stations of urban areas which is within your control. It is not like a gas pipeline from one end to the other that you lease out. Railways are just too risky. So before we fall for this NMP game, which is, as I said, a mystery within a mystery within a mystery, please come out with facts. One of the hon. Members has said a lot of negative things about Ms. Mamata Banerjee as Railway Minister. I don’t want to get into all that. All I am saying is that she had a vision statement made by professionals when she was here. The second statement is that she knows what the people want. Otherwise, she could not be getting elected again and again. Have a look at that statement! Last point that I would like to make is that when you lease out, you are leasing out the pride of India, the Heritage Railways. The Heritage Railways are like the jewels of India. How you can lease out your own jewels, the Darjeeling
Railways! First of all, it is under sad state of neglect. वो क्या सपनों की रानी and all that. It is in a sad state of neglect as it is. What will a private company do there! It requires infrastructural investment. So, you lease out jewels like the
Darjeeling heritage Railway, Shimla heritage Railway, even the Konkan Railway, which is one of the pride of the Indian Railways. Why are you going in for that? This * about earning Rupees Six lakh crores from this and that can come about but not from selling off family silver. Don’t sell off our lives, our safety, and our lifeline for a few coins of silver, Mr. Minister. And, my ultimate point, Sir, I won’t encroach on your time. One fact is not told to you and to most people. There are people who require a small machine to be plugged in while travelling on the train, for breathing, CPAP, BiPAP; somebody mentioned bronchial, I think Vasan saheb mentioned. So, there are the machines which need very low power consumption. You Ministry cut off the line every half-an-hour which destroys the machine. Your light is on, your fan is on; why can’t that plug point be on? I mean, I have not been able to understand. I spoke to half-a-dozen people. So, please remember these points that the life-saving poin which is just a plug point in your compartment, let it be on. I wound up by complementing you. You come with a wide experience. The Budget is good. Your part of the Budget is good. But, please come back to suburban passengers who are being
treated like second-class, third-class citizens and animals. Please reconsider your part in the National Monetization Pipeline. Please reconsider the Heritage Railways. Thank you very much and bless you.

Sir, our second Railway Minister, Shri N. Gopalaswami Ayyangar from Tamil Nadu had a big idea, a great idea, which has been sustained now for 60-70 years. He came up with the idea of Railway Zones. It was not there before. After that, another big idea, which has sustained over five, six decades was the idea of Madhu Dandavate ji. His idea was that instead of the sleepers just being of wood, we should put cushions there to make a difference to the common people who travel by trains. It was a great idea which has sustained the test of time. Nitish Kumar ji came up with Tatkal scheme. Lalu Prasad Yadav ji came up with the Garib Rath scheme. It was his big idea. Mamata Banerjee came up with Vision-2020 Document, and, I will come to it later. Duronto Express was there. The Izzat Pass was there for those below the poverty line. I want to ask this Government as to what is their one big idea from 2014 to 2021, which will sustain the test of time ten or twenty years from now. Oh!, why one, they will tell me that they have got five, six, seven ideas. Let us take them one by one. First is, Vande Bharat Express. In the Vande Bharat Express, the cost of a ticket is between Rs. 1,500 and Rs. 3,000. It is somewhere in this range. This is your big idea and you are entitled to it, keep it because your outlook is different from the outlook of Trinamool Congress and many other parties have as far as railways is concerned. For us, the Railways constitute the infrastructure for the fundamental right of every Indian citizen to move from point A to point B. It is the fundamental right as far as transport is concerned. You may look at it differently. We don’t. So, this is for your Vande Bharat. Let us come to your second so-called big idea. In 2017, you subsumed the Railway Budget into the General Budget. We objected to it at that time, and, we object to it today also. Former Railway Minister who is now the Chief Minister of West Bengal said, “This will damage the very core of the transport system”. What is the benefit of this ‘subsuming’ that has taken place? Please tell us. About LIC, you said that 1.5 lakh crore. These are my direct questions, and, please address these questions in your reply. Why was only 30,000 crore of rupees given? What happened after the first tranche? Why is there no further funding? Tell us about the methodology of funding, tell us about the LIC interest rates, tell us about the repayment issues. Please address these issues in your reply and we will be happy to hear the same. Let me now come to your third big idea, and, as I said, your big idea will never be in tune with our idea because your outlook towards the Railways is different from our outlook towards Railways, which is fundamental right of movement. Your third idea is, Train from Mumbai to Ahmedabad, call it super-fast or call it bullet train. There is nothing wrong
with the bullet train maybe at some later stage. To make a bullet train costs Rs. 200 crores per kilometre. Our priority would have been a dedicated freight corridor for sabji, for chawal, for gram and for everything else at a cost of Rs. 25 crore per kilometre. I understand, and, I say this on the floor of the House that this bullet train is your vanity project. But since we are talking about big ideas, let us talk about some of those ideas which were promised to be done by 2022 and we are all so eagerly looking forward to it. Some of them are – farmers’ income will double – by 2022; bullet train will come – by 2022; five trillion dollar economy – by 2022; water and toilet in every home – by 2022; electricity for all – by 2022. For those of you who want to bring these high-speed trains, there is
nothing against the high-speed trains, I would say, please think of a small railway station called Kitham. It is a small town in Uttar Pradesh. Every day 96 trains whiz pass Kitham on the New Delhi-Agra route. Rakesh, if he
wants to take a train, he would have to take the Agra-Delhi passenger train, which does not run on Sundays and the average speed of those trains is 30 kilometre/hour. Your priority; our priority. Your priority – our priority. Now, let us come to your next big idea. I want to ask you, since we think it is a fundamental right of travel, who told you to shut the railway network down four hours before covid lockdown. The Railways is a precious resource of our country. You misused that precious resource. 120 lakh passengers travel daily long distance in the railways. Just look at this number – 120 lakh. With covid restrictions, you could cut the number down to 60 lakh per day. Instead of shutting it down in 4 hours, you could keep it open for 5 days. You would not have had the migrant crisis. And those videos from Muzzafarpur railway station, I don’t want to remind you of that, of the little child with the dead mother covered because day before yesterday was the second anniversary of banging thalis. So, these are your ‘big ideas’. Now about ‘Private trains’, you say this is my ‘big idea’. Let’s ask you some questions on the private trains. Tejas trains halted 8 months later. In 2021, we were told that dozens of companies filed tenders. Whenever the RTI activists — RTI activism is part of our democracy — write to Railway Board, no data is available there. What is the communication for these private trains? Sir, there was an Empowered Group of Secretaries which was set up by the Railway Ministry. How many meetings have they had? Share with the MPs what was discussed at those meetings. Your next big idea, you say, is federalism. I can give you 12-13 projects in Bengal — everyone will have such projects in their own States — where the allocation for them is Rs. 1,000 crores for the year. Whenever there is a problem with the railway work, they say ‘State Government, land acquisition’. There are so many other examples to give you but I thought the real good one is beyond Bengal. It is for the Southern Railways, and this is from the Pink Book, which used to come out on the day of the Railway Budget. I know this subject a little. It takes you weeks to calculate. So,
after some calculations, Southern Railways got less than Rs. 400 crores in the last four years. And the Northern Railways, if we add it up, comes to about Rs. 30,000 crores. …(Interruptions)… I am not getting into the numbers, but conceptually, we talk so much about federalism. Where is the federalism? I can go State by State. Sir, I urge this Ministry, since you have a full railway department. Of course, the joke here was this. Some people were saying that we first discussed the North-East Ministry. Then we discussed the Scheduled Tribes Ministry. Third, I was asked, “Which Ministry are you speaking on”? I said now we are discussing the PMO. Sir, I urge this Ministry — they have got the numbers — to share the figures as to what allocation in a State was and what percentage that State has been
given. …(Interruptions)… Maybe you had some big ideas about the NorthEast which we missed! The Imphal railway station is still under construction. Sir, we need another big idea for the North-East, which can’t afford expensive freights. Do consider a way to make the freight rates affordable in the North-East. What steps has the Government taken to tap the Trans Asian Network? There are many of the South Asian countries which are closer. Look at these as big ideas. Well, as I said, your view on the Railways and our view on the Railways is different. I have a copy of the
Vision Document. You are following some of this. We are happy. I am reading from the Vision Document when Ms. Mamata Banerjee was the Railway Minister. Raising the speed of the passenger trains from 130 to 160 kilometers – good, on track. Don’t forget the suburban trains, Railways should set up 50 world class stations, all from the Vision Document 2010 – good. You have a lot of experience, Railway Minister, first as a bureaucrat and then with Adler Infrastructure. So these are all good experiences for you. You said in the Lok Sabha, ‘Who does the railway tracks belong to?’ You said, ‘Railways’. Who does the stations belong to? Railways. Who owns the train coaches? Railways. Who owns the signalling system? Railways. Then why is there any talk of privatization? I ask you this, Sir.
Who owns the airports? Mostly Government of India. Who owns the runways? Mostly Government of India. Who owns the air infrastructure? Mostly Government of India. Who sold Air India? We think, Sir, this Government must focus differently. We will listen here to their seven ideas which are their great ideas. You compare those seven ideas to what were previously done by the Railway Ministry and then you look at what touches the lives of the people? Who is our audience? Who is our consumer? If you think your consumer or your co-consumer is the passenger, who gets on a train in Ahmedabad and has to reach Mumbai, no. Very good. Do that. But don’t forget who the Railways is for. I will conclude by saying, please do remember you are doing nobody a favour. We have two-three minutes’ time and we have one more speaker. He will take two minutes after this. So I finish before time. Thank you, Sir.

Sir, there is a job crisis in the country. Unemployment is at its highest. On top of that, stagflation is currently gripping the global economy. As a direct result of this, further rise in unemployment is expected and forced retrenchment is also expected. How is the Government going to deal with these? Is the Government planning to bring appbased gig workers into the ambit of Code on Social Security and provide them with all employment benefits available to formal sector workers?

I would like to carry on from where Shrimati Jaya Bachchan has mentioned. The Minister has been partially misled into giving a wrong reply. Sir, with all due submissions, let me show you. I have worked in that Ministry for a long time; your Ministry does provide a lot of employment. There is a word called ‘culture and industry’ on the basis of
which almost 20 per cent of employment is provided in the advanced countries. In our country also, there are small schemes that benefit every artisan, social group, dancing group. So, please revisit the answer. It is not the question. Please go back. Your Ministry does provide, and don’t allow such answers to come in. Please concentrate.. I will take one minute, Sir. The repertory grant reaches every corner, every district of India. That grant has not been given
for three years. साहब, ज़रा देिखए, it does provide, and I am giving a positive assessment.

Sir, firstly, I would like to know about the cities which have been shortlisted for India’s bid for hosting the 2036
Olympics. And on what criteria have these cities been shortlisted?

Mr. Chairman, Sir, I really thank you for permitting me to raise the issue regarding destruction of rivers, destruction of ecology of Goa and assault on federalism. Sir, Goa is known as a jewel on the crown of India. With a spread of eleven rivers, mostly originating from the Western Ghats to the Arabian Sea, these mighty rivers represent the
lifeline of the people of Goa and have mostly ports and navigational channels. With the implementation of the Major Ports Authority Act, 2021, nationalisation of Goan rivers, implementation of three linear projects, double-tracking of railway lines, expansion of national highways, power transmission projects to wildlife sanctuaries, there is a widespread anger on the overreach of powers by the Centre, whose hidden agenda is to make Goa a coal hub. Goa is a tourist destination and not a coal destination. The Government of Goa, which is really a ‘double engine sarkar’ has also informed the Goa Assembly on July 29, 2021, and they have written to the Ministry of Ports, Shipping and Waterways, to repeal the Major Ports Authority Act, as it compels and usurps the Goan laws, like Town and
Country Planning Act, Regional Plan, ODPs made there under, Goa Panchayati Raj Act, Goa Municipalities Act, Goa Land Revenue Court, and the Goa Land Development. This draconian law is an assault on the federal structure of the country. I, therefore, join the people of Goa, join the Government of Goa, for the repeal of the Major Ports Authority Act. I would like to give only one classic example and finish. The Marmagoa Port Trust, which is already converted into Marmagoa Port Authority, and even though Goa does not have a single power project, the Government of
Goa has signed to bring in 13 million tonnes of coal, thereby making Goa a coal hub. So, my request to you, Sir, and to the hon. Minister, who is a son of Goa –he had promised that he would change it or at least amend it–is
that it should be amended immediately. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, Sir, the ‘Elderly in India 2021 Report’ by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation estimated that the elderly population was 138 million, comprising 67 million men and 71 million women. The elderly population has risen by 32.7 per cent between 2011 and 2021, while the general population has risen only by 12.4 per cent during the same period. The UN data suggests that by 2050 around 19.1 per cent of India’s population would be
above 60. Fertility rates are falling, and life expectancy is increasing, skewing the ratio of elderly folk to the youth expected to care for them. Sir, 37 per cent of Indians are internal migrants as per the 2011 Census, and we
have the large diaspora community in the world as well, meaning that young people are moving away from elderly parents and relatives in search of work and leaving them alone in their old age. Sir, 23 per cent of Indian elders live in poverty. Only 2 per cent of Indians have access to palliative care. Estimates suggest that 90 per cent of the elderly have to work to support themselves. The LASI, that is, longitudinal age study in India, found that nearly 6 per cent of older individuals in India, aged above 45 years, consumed smaller portions or skipped meals, 5.3 per cent did not eat when they were hungry and 3.8 per cent went a full day without eating due to unavailability of food. Beyond relying on children and communities to care for elderly, or leaving them to their own sufferings, there must be some
steps to be taken to form a comprehensive programme to support the elderly in their twilight years. Thank you very much, Sir.