Did Lalu really turned Railways around?

Doesn't seem so. Have a look at the latest report in Outlook India - Was It All Track-II ? (Registration required, else pick up Sept 20, 2007 issue of Outlook).

Last year I had quoted a story from Outlook India, on Lalu, how has he turned around the future of railways, in an article - Revisiting past belief. I was very curious to know the details of how was this achieved. All of the media was zapped by the numbers thrown by Lalu's ministry. But as this report reveals, most of it is just a play with numbers than actual profit. In addition, he has succeeded in extracting more money from "Aam Aadami" in various ways.

Unfortunately, no one from media seemed to have followed up on this huge success and revealed the truth, except for Outlook. This latest report details out how all these figures were tossed up to show a huge profit. Some examples:

  • Declaring trains superfast without any reduction in the time taken
  • Mangling with the "TatkaL scheme"
  • Overloading the carriers beyond capacity of the infrastructure
  • and few more

Also, lot of money which is not exactly a profit has been shown under the profit head. In addition to this, the safety norms have also being violated as per the comments by then chief commissioner railway safety (CCRS).

Now the question arises, why was media so quiet about finding this out instantaneously? A quick search on Google still talks about the last year stories and no one seems to be aware of the facts. Why no expert voiced their opinion and tried to put forth the facts? This Outlook report has come out exactly after one year. Even though Lalu was saying "The best is yet to come", I tend to believe this Outlook report given that there is no information about further improvement in the profits made by Railways, nor any Harvard/MIT B school seems to have published any paper on this.

In my earlier post, I was talking about the past belief. I think I will stick to that for some more time and would evaluate each news with more caution.

Actually I was about to post a similar article about Mayavati, CM, UP. But holding on to that, till the issue settles down. Here is the link to the article from India Today - "Off With Their Khakis" (Subscription required, else pick up Sept 24, 2007 issue of India Today)

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