Tightrope walk for Prabhu

New Delhi: For Suresh Prabhu, his second budget as Union Railways Minister is likely to be a tightrope walk with him having to strike a precarious financial balance for the beleaguered behemoth that is the Indian Railways. For the last few years, the Railways has been facing a tremendous strain financially due to falling revenue collection and increasing demand to fund various capacity augmentation projects.

At the same time, there is a need for urgent improvement of passenger services which requires increasing of fares which is a move that is staunchly opposed by a section of the railway ministry. Prabhu will also have to decide whether to impose a safety cess to strengthen safety measures in order to prevent accidents. Amid all of this, the Railways has already decided to run as many special trains on higher fares on popular routes which will help it cater to the increased demand during festive season.

This year, the cross-subsidy from freight to passenger operation has crossed Rs 30,000 crore this year with the Seventh Pay Commission's burden being about Rs 32,000 crore. Gradual replacement of bogies of the Shatabdi Express with those to be used in semi-high speed trains, a new colour scheme, state-of-the-art furnishing of coaches and Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tagging of linens are some of the proposals likely to feature in the Rail Budget 2016-17.

Besides, the scheme of manufacturing Anubhuti class coaches for premier services announced in the Rail Budget 2013-14 but in limbo is likely to be revived, according to railway sources.