Iskra ( The Spark)

There are three modes of transportation in India - Road, Rail and Airway. In transportation, the fare of the journey is inversely proportional to the travel time. Means, in a mode where travel time is more, the fare will be lesser. i.e Ahmedabad - Mumbai - Bus fare is Rs.400 while for the flight it's Rs.2000.  So, Rich mainly travel by flights and Poor by road. Each mode of transportation is subsidized. From Air India to Indian railways to state transport corporations, each of one is subsidised. That is another debate. What I am trying to demonstrate here is how the government is moving towards the regressive policies which hurt the poor the most. You must hear about the Toll tax based road, Flexi fare of Railways, UDAN scheme of the civil aviation, Private Humsafar trains etc. In the following section, I try to decode the government mindset about public policy. If you read till the end, you will find that this is really a Suit -boot kee sarakar! Here I want to f...

Click here to read paper in pdf Abstract:- In 2014-15, Indian railways (IR) passenger business incurred a loss of about INR 33,000 crores as a result of its social service orientation. [1] The total revenue generated by  passenger business was around INR 49,000 crores. Hence, the above loss amounted to around 67% of its passenger revenues. This meant that for every 1 Rupee earned in its passenger business, IR ended up expending Rupees 1.67. As a part of exercise to arrest the loss,  the Ministry of Railways introduced a flexi-fare system for certain categories of trains. Under this system, the base fare for Rajdhani, Duronto and Shatabdi trains will increase by 10% with every 10% of berths sold, subject to a ceiling of up to 1.5 times the base fare.  While this could also be a way for Railways to improve its revenue, it has raised concerns about train fares becoming more expensive.  This paper aimed to study it's impact on the Indian Railway's ...