The Great Mobile Slum

The Indian Railways is perhaps the largest commercial operation in the country. It is also a monopoly except a few privatized trains (Tejas Express) introduced in recent times. So, why should a giant monopoly incur losses or why should the Rail Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw claim the railways is losing money on subsidies. Firstly, everything PM Narendra Modi does has an element of scam in it. Nothing he does is without a scam. The Railways is no exception. It is the largest running scam for many years. First, let us get some unpleasant facts out of our way – the Indian Railways is perhaps the most horrible rail service in the world. It is lawless, there is no value for reserved passengers, there is no crowd-control on trains and to describe it in short, you could call it a “mobile slum”. I can produce hundreds of videos to prove this point but this one should be a good enough sample (Video: 9 secs):

Vaishnaw constantly claims Railways spend a huge amount to subsidize rail tickets. This implies the Railways makes losses. Why should it make losses? In 2017 the Rail Budget was merged with the regular Union Budget and since then people have no way of knowing Railways plans, fare hikes, new routes or what plans are in the offing. It became a totally opaque and corrupt operation than it was earlier. As for the services, you could say it is probably the same as Somalia or Rwanda. In other words, to put it mildly, the Indian Railways is the BIGGEST SCAM currently in operation in India. For FY24, Railways had a turnover of 2.56 lakh crores. That size of operation with a monopoly leaves enough holes for rats to flourish looting the railways in any operation:

Railways makes profits in anything you transact with it. Book a ticket – they profit. Book a freight train – they profit. Cancel a ticket – they profit. Miss a train – they profit. So much, that over a confirmed ticket of 175/- you will lose 120/- as cancellation charges. You cannot cancel after chart is prepared. In fact, the whole system of cancellations in Railways is a SCAM by itself. It is not cancellation charges, it is rather PENALTY for cancellation. In any cancellation, including waitlisted tickets that auto-cancel, the service charges or GST are not reversed. It’s gone! Absurd, idiotic rules that levy a heavy penalty for the inconvenience you cause the automated-clerks:

 

The biggest scam in recent times has to be the manner in which railways was operated during and after the Covid period. During the lockdown for 2 months from end-March 2020, all trains were also suspended. But as the services slowly returned, the GOI ran the biggest scam that most people completely missed.

# Firstly, the changed all the trains to “Special” and prefixed “0” before the last 4 digits of the train number to give it a new FAKE identity.

# They then increased fares of all classes under the excuse of social-distancing by keeping the middle-berths unsold (although if you issue RAC tickets, MBs will be used anyway).

# They hiked fares of all full-AC trains like Rajdhani/Shatabdi even though they had stopped linen and food services. Covid certificates with Modi’s photo was made mandatory (the GOI later claimed vaccination was never made mandatory). What FRAUDSTERS!

# I had pointed out this entire scam through a thread of tweets and the public also started noticing the scam. So, the GOI stated they will revert the fares to pre-Covid levels. But did they? No, they did not.

In short, the criminals of Modi govt exploited a situation like Covid with falsehoods used to fear-monger to actually loot people:

How in the world does Vaishnaw claim that Railways is subsidizing tickets? It is true that AC classes are charged excessively to partially subsidize the 2^nd Class tickets. The subsidy also comes from freight revenue. But that is also an illegitimate loot. AC fares are further subjected to surge pricing and premium Tatkal which have no explanation offered to customers. Any price any day any whim is their rule. So, let us examine this fraudulent claim of subsidy:

If a plane with a capacity of 180 seats flies 360 passengers with 180 standing, they could afford to halve the ticket price. But airlines have to follow international rules and cannot indulge in such stupidity but our Railways can. Do trains run to capacity? They mostly run with passengers far more than their capacity. A regular Express train with a capacity of around 1000 passengers with 800 2^nd Class berths/seats carries almost 3000 2^nd Class passengers. The unreserved coach or “Gernal” coach or DeenDayal coach carries at least 4 times the capacity on every train. This means a seat for 100/- is sold 4 times, i.e. Rs.400 per seat. So, where in hell is the question of subsidy when the passenger doesn’t get a seat or berth that the train is supposed to give him? This is where the FRAUD is. Like I said earlier, Indian trains are “mobile slums”. A house with one room accommodates dozens of people. This may lead to shortage of water, facilities, garbage dumps – you will find all this in trains too. It’s a simple arithmetical calculation that doesn’t require the brains of Sagarika:

Vaishnaw can argue that the subsidy is over and above the money collected from excess sales of tickets over and above the capacity of the trains. But that would compound his moronery of defending a poor business model, which is what the Railways is.

IRCTC was formed in 1999 and became operative in 2002. It became a listed company. IRCTC handles all the passenger ticketing, catering services and Heritage and Luxury tourism for the Railways. A few years ago it also became a full-fledged travel agent offering air-tickets, bus-tickets, hotel bookings etc. It is fully owned by the GOI (Ministry of Railways). IRCTCs turnover is ONLY computed by the service charges it collects. The fares go to the Railways or the respective operators of the service. It may also get commissions from airlines or other tour operators. In 2024-25, IRCTC’s turnover is likely to be around 1500 crores with a profit of around 350 crores. These are rough estimates. IRCTC has also offered dividends from its profits to its shareholders in the previous years. So, the question is: If IRCTC (practically a “pimp” of the Railways) can regularly make profits, offer dividends and have a good share price in the market – WHY SHOULD RAILWAYS MAKE LOSSES?

The answer to that question of Railways making losses is simple. It is too big a commercial operation handled by one single Ministry and one Lipstick idiot called Ashwini Vaishnaw with no responsibility or accountability at any level or stage. I am not going into a discussion of all the accidents and deaths that Railways cause or the deaths by stampedes or falling of foot-over-bridges – that incompetence compounds their losses. The Railways is like a kitchen-sieve that we use to filter grains and stuff. It is full of holes that leaks from everywhere with everyone looting it in every operation. There is one report where a person gave a job in Railways for 15 lakhs. If you Google for Railways-Scams, it will run about 3-4 pages on your computer.

Over 50% of Railways expenses are on manpower – salaries, benefits, pensions etc. That is a huge amount considering the revenue from transporting humans is a loss-making business for the Railways while the freight revenues compensate partially for the losses. Consequently, Railways have to be regularly funded from the Union Budget for any capital investment or as additional resources to sustain itself. Of the 17 zones of Railways, 9 zones had an operational ratio of over 100% in 2023-24. So, they do know which areas are making the big losses.

Follow on Twitter.

Buy India’s only Book on Academic & LifeSkills

Seven Years Sunk

On May 21, the GOI issued an advisory to social media platforms that the usage of the term “Indian Variant” for a Covid strain should be removed from all content and usage. Promptly, Reuters that evening put out a tweet using the very term. The offensive term “Indian Variant” was used as far back as April 19. The GOI was just sleeping:

It is fair to assume that this late awakening of India being abused with the term came only when Singapore reacted instantly to a stupid tweet by Arvind Kejriwal using the term “Singapore Strain”. So much that Singapore even warned that it has legal provisions to prosecute Kejriwal but decided against it after GOI reassured it. Last week, the top BJP sleuths, like Sambit Patra, claimed to have landed on a “Toolkit” by the Congress which promoted usage of the terms “Indian Variant” and “Modi Strain”. Regardless of what the Toolkit conspired to do, the GOI did not act on usage of the term “Indian variant” till 2 days ago. There is a severe lack of alertness and response to situations by a govt that already looks like a lame-duck as much as the PM looks like a wandering mendicant. He has simply no clue what to do other than fire-fighting. Consequently, the Congress filed an FIR against some BJP leaders who circulated the Toolkit in Chhattisgarh where they have a Congress govt. On their mass-complaint Twitter also tagged Patra’s tweet on the Toolkit as “manipulated media”:

Nothing can be a bigger humiliation for a ruling party when a social media platform alleges and marks its content as possible “concoction” and “forged”. In the initial years of ModiSarkar (2014-2017) many of us thought these are teething troubles that a new govt faces and that its clumsiness and stupidity will go once they get a grip on things and some experience in government. But, unfortunately, despite being elected with a greater victory in the second term, the BJP has only drifted and slid into pathetic incompetence and all-round failures. The only thing that the BJP seemed good at is electioneering but once they get to power, they seem to be hopelessly out of ideas, out of guts and out of common sense. Today, many of the staunchest supporters of BJP like Suhel Seth, Minaz Merchant are also ridiculing Modi. Merchant has even ridiculed Modi’s beard and ask him to groom himself and return to normalcy. I see some clear reasons why BJP is on a slide:

Surrounding all the above failures is a serious lack of leadership. I have stated elsewhere that Modi’s main “brains-trust” was Arun Jaitley in the first term – be it the decision of Demonetisation (which turned out bad) or poor implementation of GST, Jaitley had a hand. Jaitley also had a hand in the legal work for junking 370. And most of all, Jaitley was a masterful media manipulator. In fact, media-management was the biggest asset of Jaitley. With Jaitley out of govt in 2019 and later passing away and passing away of another veteran like Sushma Swaraj, the ModiSarkar looks depressed and out of sorts. Most of all, Modi himself looks depressed and out of sorts especially after the Bengal loss.

Modi went quiet after the Bengal loss. The BhajanMandli idiots started chanting that his silence is his secret weapon. But the usually loud-mouth, blabbering Modi returned to his old ways lecturing on Covid-2 and talking directly to District Magistrates on handling Covid. He usually likes to talk in a situation where nobody talks back or nobody asks any probing questions. In all these 7 years, Modi’s interactions have all been one-way unless there are little children who ask “programmed questions” on Mann Ki Baat or Pariksha Pe Charcha. Though many blame Modi for the Covid-2 failures and quite rightly so, I don’t consider it as his major failure as this was a situation beyond his imagination and control. I did expect that as soon as he stopped election campaigning in mid-April he would address the nation, express sorrow for the dead and assure people that his govt would do all it can to save lives. Nothing came about. However, Modi expressed sorrow on May 21, choked and fought off tears in another show of histrionics that would do Swara Bhaskar proud:

This pathetic tear-jerking is uncalled for and unnecessarily adds to the incompetence of the GOI. As with the Toolkit barrage, all the ministers and BhajanMandli are only interested in protecting the failing “image” of Modi. And he doesn’t help his cause by doing more stupid things like an aerial survey of cyclone hit areas of coastal Gujarat. Who in hell does an aerial survey in this day and age? And even if an aerial survey is needed for some reason, why should the PM drop everything and go all the way to coastal Gujarat? This is something the CM or top NDRF officers could have done and reported back. It’s a worthless activity but politicians love “optical activity”. Aerial surveys are just that – Optical Foolishness. And in the latest flight, Modi sits with a printed “political map” of Gujarat and looks at coastal Junagadh and Diu. Even Einstein may not be able to figure out what he would understand from such an exercise:

Unfortunately (or fortunately for Modi) another cyclone is predicted for the east coast around May 26. Maybe that will give him another chance to go an aerial survey with Mamata Banerjee and get away from Delhi. Such runaway-activities, general interactions with frontline govt officials and sermons to the public are what seem to keep the PM busy. If there are no election campaigns, Modi seems out of his element. It now turns out that the 18-44 group vaccine announcement was also a political distraction from all the Covid deaths, burning pyres and tragedies all over. Now the entire vaccination programme has gone into heavy weather and every age-group is struggling. The GOI predicts vaccine availability will improve only from August. This is an outright fraud on the innocent public by the nautanki of PM Modi and his gang.

Modi came to power in 2014 on the promise of punishing the corrupt and “Vikas” for all. All that is now down the drain. Even the “fake” unspoken Hindutva image he had carved out for himself is sunk beyond redemption. His only ideas seem to be Muslim and minority appeasement, crawl at gurudwaras and doles to farmers and other backward groups. There is nothing to revive the economy or tackle unemployment.

One of the most disgusting legacies of Modi will be that of wanton murders of Hindus across the country, especially in Bengal. Throughout all these killings, Modi not only watched helplessly but didn’t even have a word of sympathy or condolence for the dead, many of them BJP Karyakartas. ModiSarkar is now a ship that is wrecked and searching desperately for a lighthouse. Of course, there is a big difference between being 63 and 70 and aging. While 70 may not be politically that old, the aging does affect the agility of the mind among some people. The one noticeable change is Modi’s appearance – from wanting to be a Bollywood type style icon, he is now a bearded recluse. Instead of destroying the corrupt, the anti-nationals and the anti-Hindus, Modi has simply allowed them to go on an unchecked rampage. India lost 10 years under the corrupt Sonia-MMS govt. It’s now seven years wasted under PM Modi and there are no signs that the drift will end.

 

Follow the blog on Twitter / Follow on Koo.

Subscribe To EducatingForward / Buy The EF Handbook

Donate in INR / Donate in US$