Taking a leaf out of the civil aviation ministry’s plans to establish an agency to regulate airfares, railway minister Dinesh Trivedi has mooted an independent regulator for fixing passenger fares and freight tariffs of the Indian Railways.
But the similarity ends there: If one of the civil aviation ministry’s objectives is to prevent private airlines from abruptly raising fares, Mr Trivedi appears guided by a desire to delink, or “depoliticise”, the fixing of fares for the state-owned railways.
Rail fares haven’t been raised since 2002-2003 as railway ministers have chosen to play safe. This has badly hit the railways’ bottomline as operational costs have risen sharply in the past decade, due to a rising wage bill and increased fuel prices.