Rail Budget 2015: 7 stats Prabhu hopes to beat his predecessors on

By Rajesh Pandathil & Kishor Kadam Railway minister Suresh Prabhu’s first rail budget is being well received by experts across the board. For one, the minister has held back from announcing new trains and secondly, he has unveiled an ambitious plan for the betterment of the life-line infrastructure. “Suresh Prabhu’s first Budget sets the vision for transformation of Railways to become an engine of economic growth for the country and reverse years of under investment,” said Arvind Mahajan, head of infrastructure and government services at KPMG in India. Mahajan expressed happiness is particularly happy about the Rs 8.5 lakh crore investment the minister has proposed over the next five years, while promising to enhance customer experience and making travel safer through modernisation of the infrastructure. The minister has proposed various new passenger amenities such as “operation five minutes” for issuing unreserved tickets, concessional e-tickets for differently abled travellers, a multi-lingual e-portal for booking tickets, on-board entertainment on select Shatabdi trains and surveillance cameras in select mainline coaches and ladies’ compartments. He has increased the total allocation for passenger amenities is by 67 percent. Plan budget has been increased by 52 percent from Rs 65,798 crore to Rs 1,00,011 crore in 2015-16. Of this, 41.6 percent will come from the central government and 17.8 percent will be internal generation. He has proposed to set up a Financing Cell in the Railway Board. “Excellent initiatives in Ease of Doing Business with Railways in the Rail budget. If the initiatives are implemented, it will improve on the private sector trust and hence help in attracting private sector participation in railways,” said Jaijit Bhattacharya, partner, infrastructure and government services at KPMG in India, adding it is on overall well-balanced budget. Here are seven graphics that show how Prabhu plans to do in comparison with the earlier ones: