Sir, it is normally considered very bad taste to spoil a honeymoon, but without any regret and without any apology being distasteful, I have to, on behalf of the Trinamool Congress, not only spoil the honeymoon but also make some serious issues early in this new mandate which has been granted by the people of India to this new govt.
We want to make some very specific points, first two points on the rail and three points on the other hikes. Rail, firstly, this old system which the Congress followed, and the UPA, is bypass parliament and you increase prices. I would first suggest to ‘the trainee railway minister’ to read the vision 2020 document. Because if he had read that 81-page document it would be very clear that passenger fare hike which we’ll be told, passenger fares are showing -27,000 crore, we dispute this figure in the first place. It is not 27,000 crore because there are, under lot of heads have been put the passenger fare hike negative; that figure is somewhere between 5-6000 crore. If they look at it like that and if they do not put all those extra overheads, the passenger fare hike is a non-starter. It shouldn’t be there and to try and make the same logic that you can only get better facilities if you have passenger fares.
By the way, in these passenger fares, 1% only is for Shatabdi, Duranto, Rajdhani. The balance, approximately 99%, are not Shatabdis, Durantos and Rajdhanis. They are your second-class passenger fares, who you have given your so-called bitter pill to. Why give them the bitter poll? That’s the first point on the railway fares, shouldn’t have been done, done at the wrong time, should have waited for budget.
Second, on freight. What is the issue on freight? We made the suggestion before but they got 24 hours to do some last-minute homework to try and solve the problem of about freight. The freight problem will not be solved, if you keep increasing freight fares. You have to acknowledge that road transportation is your biggest comparator. You have to acknowledge that you cannot take road transportation on, you have to work with road transportation. Because if you start losing out road transportation that will not be your answer.
Our concrete suggestion, of the Trinamool Congress is, please, before the budget, since you have already messed it up with the freight fares, consider RORO, what we call ‘roll-on and roll-off’. That is the solution, where you actually load trucks on to the trains and then the road transport and the railways become partners.
Three quick points on the rest of the price hike. This is another scary thing, now we are reading about the proposed deregulation of LPG, cooking, industrial gas, diesel and petrol. Now we are told it’s on hold. It’s again dangerous after 14th of August, when we all go on holiday, again this backdoor thing will happen, and it’s a pretty obvious to know that if you do this what will happen – agriculture, fertilizer prices for which we have being screaming and we walked out of the government last time – because fertilizer prices will go up as a result, power prices will go up and transport will also go up.
Next is the essential commodities. Bringing onion and potato into the essential commodities. On the face of it, it seems a good idea, but our question is please look at that Essential Commodities Act very closely because you have not defined hording. So is this a sneaky way in all your talk about co-operative federalism (and we are all for operative federalism), is this a sneaky way to pass the burden on to the states. Be aware, so please define it according to the Essential Commodities Act, and since we have limited time today the other two points we would like to make very quickly in conclusion is, you all came to power with this multi-billion dollar advertising shoo sha. Fine. But at the end what we are seeing, in this honeymoon which we are being spoilsports of – we are not being spoilsports, we will keep pointing out these blunders you are making – is, are you really following your so-called Gujarat model which you followed or are you actually making a photocopy of the Congress model of governance which took this nation nowhere.
This is the bottom line, and you are talking about giving a bitter pill? Who are you giving this bitter pill to? Do you want to give the bitter pill to the woman who has to pay more for the LPG, for the man or the family who has to travel by train? Who is this bitter pill for? Please, course correct now. The bitter pill should be given to somebody else. Please spare the 99% of others who travel by AC. And while on the subject of the pill, let me leave you with the thought, you have got a mandate which you must interpret as a tonic. Now I feel, interpret is a tonic, and if you work for everybody, you don’t need a bitter pill, otherwise you will flush that tonic down the drain.
