Madam Speaker, I rise to place before the House the Railway Budget for 2009-10. “The real power in politics — is it manpower? Alas! In a real sense it is money power.” Members may not know this quote is from a poem titled “Politics” I penned while I was putting finishing touches to this speech. Madam Speaker, this is a budget and it is about money. But I will come to that later. This is a historic occasion. Never before in history has the Railway Budget been presented by a lady before a lady speaker. The Yadavs in this House need reminding I was India’s first lady Railway minister in 2000. Even as I speak, my mind is on my next poem and it will say, “Three Ms bring power and make the others cower.” I do not refer to Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing. That is “No-No”. I mean “Ma-maati-maanush”, with Meira-Mamata-Mukherjee as a sub-strand. That is how we will transform our “Jaago Bangla” message to “Jaago Bharat”. In celebration of this trinity, I am sending a shawl to Ram Vilas Paswan. As in 1997, I would have thrown it at him in this august House. But unfortunately, he lost the elections.

In my message to members of the Railway family on May 30, 2009, I said, “Railways are committed to protect and nurture the commercial interest, but it has to be done with a human face... While performing our duties in the length and breadth of the country, we should always be alert to maintain the highest level of safety and security of Indian Railways.” Eighty three per cent of train accidents occur because of human error. We are upgrading safety and signalling equipment and manual signals between stations will be replaced by automated signalling. Failure-detection circuits and anti-collision devices will be extended to the entire system. I am constrained because I have still not found a replacement for Sudhir Kumar. He is on sabbatical, writing books. But I have been told the volume “Bankruptcy to Billions” is a gigantic fraud. Once I have an OSD (Ratan is finding it difficult enough to switch from Fiat to Zen, he can’t drive trains), I will expose how my predecessor has driven billions to bankruptcy. Therefore, Shri S.S. Khurana, Chairman, Railway Board, will provide details of what Railways will do to improve safety and security.

... contd.