Commuter Rail - Match Fixing

We are now past all the Budgets and big-bang announcements from both State and Central Govt. Time for some close up analysis of all these unfortunate annual Tamshas. It is clear by now that, in the GOK state budget, Railway Budgets and the latest Union Budget, there was remotely any hint of support to commuter rail service proposal. Not that we had any expectations from both the state and central govt.

Unwilling State - Government of Karnataka

First let me start with the state budget, which was presented on Feb 8, 2013 by the Chief Minister himself. The city of Bangalore did see a hint of some attention with Rs. 6,203 crores for city development. Why not ? Bangalore contributes 30% of Karnataka's GDP. What it gets in return is peanuts. The same complaint that Mumbaikar's accuses central govt of. In the entire state budget document, there is no mention of support or approval to CRS proposal unlike in 2011 and 2012 budgets.

Having closely followed and pursued the matter with the state govt agencies like DULT, IDD and Chief Secretary's office, I know pretty much before hand that we are yet again set for disappointment. Reason being, after RITES had submitted its report CRS to DULT, the CRS proposal file just managed to travel to Chief Secretary's office. Through numerous emails, personal conversations with the officials at DULT, IDD etc got the impression that nothing tangible has been achieved since the task of CRS was given to DULT to pursue in 2010. Though there were numerous meetings on the subject, nothing concrete has either been proposed or considered to make CRS proposal a reality. The considered view among the GOK bureaucrats is that Namma Metro should be priority over all other proposals. BMRCL in the zeal of getting all the attention it needs is pretty happy to play the big brother role in deciding which urban transport proposal needs to be taken up. This should not surprise anybody, until few months ago the Principal Secretary incharge at UDD had no clue about Commuter/Suburban Rail. For most of the Babus, Namma metro is the commuter rail. No offense to them, as somewhere along we at Praja also didn't reached out all the Babus to brief them about the proposal. Hopefully SB and dvsquare has signed up to raise the CRS awareness in Babudom shortly.

Though various Praja members had reached out to City MLAs, Chief Secretary and the CM, but nothing concrete was seen or heard from them. Repeated requests for action and even request for meeting remained unanswered. Clearly, there was nothing concrete or substantial was done at state govt level. It will not be wrong to say that GOK has not taken up CRS proposal for consideration leave alone lobbying with Union Govt for money and necessary approval.

Indifferent Center - Indian Government

The story at the central govt. is no different than the state government. The Railway Budget, Union Budget is bereft of any reference to the commuter rail projects in general unlike in 2011 and 2012 budgets. There was ZERO expectations from railway budget as railways is broken and it is struggling make its need met. With 92% operation ration we can hardly hope for CRS proposal in Railway Budget.

Adding salt to the wound was the recent RTI reply from PMO that there was NO proposal from GOK on CRS. Who should we blame now? May be ourselves for not being on streets to demand CRS.

It is not that center was not approached by Praja. Through various letters, emails, personal meetings, many Parja members made an effort to garner support for CRS. Barring couple of MPs writing letters to PM and CM, there was complete silence from all others including the Union Ministers from state. The apathy runs across the parties, if Veerappa Moily acknowledges the petition, petitions to S M Krishna, Muniyappa, Rahman Khan, Venkaih Naidu, P C Mohan, Rajeev Chandrshekhar, Chandre Gowda did not even yield acknowledgement leave alone any action.

We all know Ministry of Railways is highly politicized ministry and project of CRS nature requires hard political lobbying and bargaining. Who has the political will for that? No Body. It requires the lobbying of nature that Former AP CM Chandra Babu Naidu did for getting MMTS to Hyderabad.

We have a indifferent state govt which is the worst performing govt by any standard that state of Karnataka has seen. If the trend continues, the day is not far off where GOK will be pleading for special status like Bihar and other states.

If this is not a perfect "MATCH FIXING", what else is this? Only beneficiaries in this match is  babus, experts, politicians, corporates who sees virtues and interest in expensive infrastructure projects that runs into 10 of thousands of Crores, not in projects like CRS, Namma Railu.

Would the upcoming elections in May make a difference to this indifferent attitude of the state and union govt.?