The rot became glaringly visible in the early 1980s with A B A Ghani Khan Chowdhary, the mercurial Congressman from West Bengal, as railway minister. Popularly known as Minister of Malda, he used Railways as fiefdom to further his constituency. He made Malda a new rail zone headquarters, gave it a railway stadium, hospital and a factory. The result: Even in the high noon of Marxist dominance in Bengal with Jyoti Basu at the helm, this Congressman bucked the trend by winning successive elections from Malda.
This weakness to create new rail division with parochial sentiments in mind is something that afflicted most incumbents in the ministry and the eastern railway zones (namely those in West Bengal, Bihar and Jharkhand) became a hot bed for this turf war. Chowdhury's gesture did not go down well in neighbouring undivided Bihar as Malda had encroached upon parts of Dhanbad division. The revenge happened two decades later when Bihari babu Lalu Prasad became railway minister. He hit back by carving out parts of Samastipur and Malda areas in the newly created Bhagalpur division. The energy rich Dhanbad had an unenviable fate of getting latched on to many divisions, thanks to its lucrative freight revenue.
Lalu Prasad as the railway minister draws mixed reactions. During his tenure, at least on paper, the ministry was financially sound - though crictics have dime a dozen theories ranging from fudging of figures to Lalu being so embroiled in Bihar politics that he left the ministry at the hands of some efficient babus - and that did the trick. Anyhow what followed was a political version of Raju ban gaya gentleman with our rustic hero being called up for enviable assignments like lecturing management students from Harvard and Wharton.
Fellow Bihari and bete noire Ram Vilas Paswan headed the Rail Bhawan only to create a rail zone in his constituency Hajipur. He yanked off Dhanbad out of the Kolkata-based South Eastern Railway and attached to Hajipur. After he stepped down Hajipur's development was put on slow track. Also distributed the maximum number of free passes (about 50,000), largely to people from his constituency, Hajipur.
Jaffer Sharief came to the ministry riding his hobby horse of uni-gauge, with his home state Karnataka in mind. The state had many metre-gauge lines built during princely regimes. The project sought to convert the uneconomical metregauge lines to broadgauge and put his hometown Hassan on the rail network. He brushed aside all opposition from experts and this project even now continues to cost railways dear. Sharief also built a road bridge over a railway crossing in Bangalore, reportedly to clear way to his farmhouse. His favouring of Swedish company Asea Brown Boweri to import locomotives landed him in cloud with allegations of kickbacks.
Madhavrao Scindia belonged to the original band of Oxbridge elite (also called 'babalog') brought in by Rajiv Gandhi to run the country. It was an era when computerisation was considered a panacea for all ills and was forced upon the near Luddite government workforce. Not surprisingly Scindia is credited with computerisation of railways. However even he ensured that every budget had something to offer for his constituency Gwalior – a Shatabdi or some train linking to his constituency, though was not as brazen as others.
But when his daughter Chitrangadha was getting married to Karan Singh's son, the maharaja in him took over. The Gwalior railway station was paved with marble (obviously with taxpayer's money) to greet the wedding guests.
But none of the above transgressions compare with what Mamata Banerjee did when she was directly ruling the Rail Bhawan and later on with her remote control. It is even more disgusting that UPA leadership allowed her to have her way. For hapless rail travellers there is going to be little respite from unclean bogies, stale food and nauseating lavatories plus a dicey journey with outdated safety systems.
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