By Hiranmoy Roy, T.Bangar Raju,
Indian Union Budget 2021-22: Indian Railways has been tremendously impacted in 2020 considering that the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted services, which had been entirely paused for a handful of months. In December 2020, the government had announced a draft National Rail Plan to accentuate the development of Railway sector. The expectation from Union Budget for Railways had been to involve allocations and proposals to supplement this program. The draft National Rail Plan envisaged an initial surge in capital investment correct up to 2030 to develop provisioning of rail transport ahead of demand and improve the modal share of the Railways in freight by 45 %,” the railways ministry stated in a statement. The National Rail Plan aimed at creating sufficient rail infrastructure by 2030 to cater to the projected site visitors needs up to 2050. The objective is to improve the modal share of rail in freight from the present level of 27 per cent to 45 per cent. one hundred% electrification of Broad-Gauge Routes by 2023. Indigenously created automatic train protection technique to be launched. The Finance Minister Sitharaman announced on Monday a record sum of Rs. 1.10 lakh cr. for the Railways, out of which Rs.1.07 lakh cr. is for capital expenditure, and announced that the national transporter would monetise the committed freight corridors post its commissioning.
The crucial objectives of National Rail Plan for India 2030 is to develop a future prepared railway technique by 2030, bringing down the logistic expense for sector is at the core of the approach to allow Make In India,” FM Sitharaman stated.
The finance minister stated the Railways would take up the future committed freight corridor projects – The East Coast Corridor from Kharagpur to Vijayawada, East-West Corridor from Bhusawal to Kharagpur to Dankuni and North-South Corridor from Itarsi to Vijaywada. Sitharaman also proposed the detailed project report would be ready in the very first phase. She announced broad gauge route electrification is anticipated to attain 46,000 route kilometers.
As aspect of Indian Railway, very first private investment initiative for operating passenger trains, the Railway Ministry earlier this year, completed the approach of evaluating applications for public-private partnership (PPP) in passenger train operations. 102 applicants had been discovered eligible to participate in the request for proposal (RFP) stage. Infrastructure majors such as Larsen & Toubro (L&T), BHEL, and GMR had been amongst the 102 eligible operators certified to bid in the very first stage. Indian Railways sought private investment of about 30,000 crores for operating contemporary passenger train operations. The Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) is also one of the major applicants certified to participate in the RFP stage. The Railway Ministry had invited the request for quotation for private sector participation for passenger train services more than 109 origin-location (OD) pairs of routes by way of the introduction of 151 contemporary trains or rakes. The 109 OD pairs of routes have been formed into 12 clusters across the railway network.
Every sector such as the Indian Railways hoped higher from this year’s spending budget considering that the railways was also amongst the sectors and industries hit by the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown to curb its spread. When the nation was dealing with the cascading influence of the coronavirus, and all the services and activities came to a halt, Railways played a key part as their services had been partially active through the pandemic and it helped the migrants to attain back house. However, just like each other sector, railways also faced a enormous loss. Earlier, the Indian Railways and Union Budget used to be presented separately in India for the previous 92 years. However, the lengthy-run practice came to an finish in 2016, and the Railways Budget was merged with the Union Budget.
Last year, the Gross Budgetary Allocation for the railway sector was Rs 70,250 crore and this time it could be greater than the preceding ones. Another factor that did not meet this year is that the Union Budget need to have announced some higher-speed trains that could connect tourist hubs, pilgrimage spots, and other essential regions. Earlier, the government announced the bullet train project involving Mumbai and Ahmedabad, having said that, it did not go as per the program due to the coronavirus pandemic. Thus, the Finance Minister need to have also announced the expansion program on the bullet train in the nation. The government could also have announced a handful of Tejas trains and some railway lines that can move agricultural goods at a quicker pace. No new program about the infrastructural up-gradation of railways is also rolled out.
Greening the public transport and combating pollution, we want to expand public transport using electrical energy generated by renewable sources is a way forward for India. Government announced in its public transport electrification scheme in 2019 FAME – II to provide 7000 electric buses in one hundred cities. Electric buses can replace the metro and suburban rail, and this undoubtedly cut down pollution. Public transport electrification scheme can be expanded to metro cities and tier-II cities. Thus, targeting pollution reduction from transport will allow us to meet our Nationally Determined Commitment (NDC) targets. Public and private investments in green transport to be encouraged and this requirements policy directives and budgetary provisioning. We can replicate the examples of cities exactly where electric automobiles had been introduced resulting in reduction of emissions. Otherwise, damaging externality emanating from transport expansion in India will outcome in enormous financial losses from our GDP in terms of accommodating environmental accounting of our National Income. Hence there is enormous environmental implication and financial losses from transport development in India. Pollution taxes on transport i.e., eco- taxes can also be imposed on polluter thereby minimizing GDP losses.
Thus, in the light of these expectation, spending budget allocation for railways is humble and will want more pragmatic measures for the sector to place the sector in the higher trajectory development along with addressing the challenge of damaging environmental influence.
(The authors are faculty and researchers in the region of Transportation Economics at School of Business, UPES, Dehradun. Views expressed are individual and do not reflect the position or police of the TheSpuzz Online.)