Even though Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav claimed in his budget speech on Tuesday that Railways’ “financial turnaround” was largely on account of a strategy that it devised to increase the traffic volume, the budget figures on traffic receipts paint a different story.

A comparison of figures shows that growth receipts in most cases have been in single digits, and in some cases even shown a dip.

Consider this: While the Minister projects a 13 per cent hike in total earnings for 2008-09 as against the revised estimates for 2007-08, the increase in total ear-nings between the budget estimate and revised estimate for 2007-08 is a paltry 2 per cent.

In fact, second-class passenger earnings, which constitute around 22 per cent of the total earnings, show a 1 per cent dip between the budget and revised estimate for 2007-08. The same holds true for goods earnings, that form nearly 66-67 per cent of the total earnings. It shows a marginal increase of 2 per cent.

This year’s budget adjusts for lags in 2006-07 and puts out the “actuals” for 2006-07. When a comparison is made between the revised estimate for 2006-07 (from last year’s budget) and the actuals for 2006-07 (from this year’s budget) — the numbers throw up a trend. The “actual” total earnings, as against the revised estimates for total earnings for 2006-07, are down by 1 per cent.

A similar comparison for goods earnings as well as second class passenger earnings shows a dip of 1 and 2 per cent respectively.

... contd.