2nd of July 2009 was marked as the first Railway budget from the newly formed UPA government in India. I was not aware of it until I went and sat in front of the idiot box during my lunch time at office. There stood Madam Mamata with her list of offerings for the railway department of the nation for the new financial year. The first statement she made too the whole enthusiasm out of my mind! "Railways is not only for economic benefits. It should also appeal for the society." With this being plain English words, this is an ideal scenario. But if one can look deep into the thought process that would have gone while conveying this, it is devastating...
During the time of our Laloo Prasad Yadav, Indian railways recorded the highest profits in its lifetime! Thousands of crores of profit was recorded! More than 40% of it went into the develpment processes of the nation. All Laloo did were simple things. Nothing great, no technological advancements happened overnights. Implementation of simple ideas here and there was what led to the amazing turn over. This took Laloo to places like IIMs to deliver lecures on management! Though people might argue that he is very currupt and a few hundreds of crores has gone into his pocket, I still support Laloo. Why?? Here it goes... All of you will agree to the fact that the Indian goverment and all government related activities are surrounded by corruption. This is the way things work in India. I agree that it has to change so that the common man is not affected very much. But, this cannot happen overnight. It is very simple. Say you are following a ritual since your birth. Suddenly after 50 years somebody comes and asks you to go against it, the natural tendency is for you to resist the change even though there might be enormous amount of benefits by you not following the ritual. This has a lot to do with psychology and mind games people play. Okay... coming back to Laloo's kaarnama... He might have taken bribe, but dont forget, this has yielded for 1000s of crores being invested in the development of India.
This is what I term as Constructive destruction. You destroy an existing way of doing things to come out with amazing (though small) ideas to make things better. If you feel Laloo was destroying the money of the public, then he was doing so to get a return of an amount which no Indian could think of! This is the display of constructive destruction!
Coming back to where I started from; the budget is good to the public. But I don't see returns in the way it had in the previous term. All Mamata wanted to prove is that she has the capability to win hearts and not pockets (which she did eventually! Hats off to her for that...) and thus to disprove Laloo and show him that she is better than him (egoism plays a very major role in politics. Infact it is the base for politics to occur.) But, considering the economic downturn which happened very recently, it makes sense to concentrate more on the pockets. The hearts will be there for many more generations to come... She tried to constructively destroy what ever was done. Hopefully a few of her ideas will work out (I doubt though).
This is where I began thinking, will the railway budget be in a position to provide India with the same ROI which it did the last time? Was the roughness between Laloo and the UPA affect the growth of our nation? Where is India heading towards; Constructive destruction or Destructive construction??? Looking forward for the Budget today...
PS: Please note the big picture here without spending much energy on the intricacies of politics of India (If you feel anything is wrong, it is your thought process and I respect it completely...)
