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28 March 2024

India railways to hike fares to improve safety

Published
By AFP

India's railway minister promised a safety overhaul on the often deadly network on Wednesday financed in part by the first fare hike in nearly a decade, a controversial move already stirring resistance.

Dinesh Trivedi, a member of the regional Trinamool Congress Party, unveiled the hike during a railway budget session in parliament, saying the extra cash was needed to improve the notoriously poor safety record of Indian trains.

"The health of the railway finances is not good," he told CNN-IBN television. "I have taken the railways out of ICU (intensive care)... I cannot guarantee safety if I do not have money."

A recent official report revealed almost 15,000 people were killed every year crossing rail tracks -- a figure that the government described as a "massacre".

"I vow to target zero deaths," Trivedi told parliament. "My focus will be safety, safety, safety."

The rise in passengers fares immediately faced criticism from his own Trinamool party, which is a member of the left-leaning coalition government headed by the Congress party.

Another U-turn on a proposed reform would spell more bad news for the beleaguered government.

It succumbed to pressure from the opposition over the opening up the retail market to foreign supermarkets last December and has reversed a confusing ban on cotton exports imposed last week.

Trivedi said the government aims to spend a record 601 billion rupees (ê12 billion) in the financial year 2012-13 on improving safety and tracks, building new lines and introducing new trains.

The proposed increase in fares will be largest for air-conditioned premium classes and smallest for uncomfortable and often packed lower class.

The 1,384-kilometre (860-mile) journey between Mumbai and Delhi will rise by a total of 415 rupees (ê8.30) or 30 paesa (less than a cent) per kilometre for the top class.

For bottom-rung second-class customers, the Mumbai-Delhi fare will rise by 27.68 rupees or two paesa per kilometre.

Trivedi said that upgrading the British colonial-era railway network and improving safety would need 14 trillion rupees over the next decade and hiking fares was the only way to pay for it.

Proposed safety improvements on the largely unfenced network include phasing out unmanned level crossings, where many accidents occur, and upgrading tracks. Toilets which empty onto the tracks and spread disease will also be replaced.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh praised the budget as "forward-looking" in a short statement released by his office.

The National Crime Records Bureau, which gathers the causes of fatalities across India, says 25,705 people died on the railways in 2009, the latest overall figures available.

The railways -- still the main form of long-distance travel in India despite fierce competition from new airlines -- run thousands of passenger and freight trains and carry millions of people daily.

But derailments, collisions and other accidents are common.

The railway budget is presented separately from the national budget, to be announced Friday, due to the huge freight and passenger volume.