Look who's praising whom

NEW DELHI: Within hours of Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh���s snub to Lalu Prasad���s arch rival Ram Vilas Paswan over fielding of candidates in Bihar elections, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday sent a congratulatory letter to the railway minister on his ministry���s performance.
An upbeat Lalu Prasad said: "I am happy. This is an affirmation of the good work being done by us." Rail Bhavan officials are also celebrating the big pat from the PM.
Complimenting the "remarkable improvement" in the performance of the railways during the first quarter of 2005-06, Manmohan Singh wrote: "I have been informed that the significant improvement in the functioning of the railways was brought about by a number of initiatives taken by the ministry under your able leadership leading to increased volumes, reduced unit cost, enhancement in public-private partnership, with simultaneous improvement in customer services."
The minister had said that passenger and freight traffic, which has been stagnating at 3.6% and 4%, respectively, in last two decades, registered a growth of 6% and 8%, respectively, in 2004-05.Prasad said all this is a result of "common sense and use of sound economics".
"We started with the firm belief that we needed to maximise profits in freight sector and minimise losses in passenger earnings. Our studies revealed that this could be done without following the conventional hike-the-fare formula,������ he said adding: "We decided to play on volumes."
Taking a swipe at BJP leader Pramod Mahajan, who had remarked after the budget that the idea of changing the turnround time of wagons (time between two successive loadings) from 7 days to 5 days was like Mungeri Lal ke sapne, Prasad said: "Mungeri Lal is smiling today. The wagon turnround time has been brought down to five and a half days and by the year-end, it will touch five." This has been achieved by amendments in tariff schedule, terminal incentive scheme, round-the-clock working at loading centres etc.
"Also we found that wagons were running on below-capacity loads. By simply optimising the load use of wagons across our 4,000 freight trains, we augmented capacity by over 30%," the minister added.
In the passenger segment also, the ministry is applying some simple common sense to minimise losses. "Everyday about
48,000 sleeper class passengers are put on the waiting lists even as about 18,000 berths go vacant in our AC coaches. Even if we can get just about the sleeper class fares for these 18,000 seats per day at an average of Rs 600, we end up with Rs 1.2 crore everyday adding up to about Rs 500 crore per annum," the minister reasoned.
The goodwill gain for this, he adds, would be to the tune of Rs 5,000 crore. The system is in the process of getting implemented.