Back on track, finally?

It is true that the hike in railway fares which Union Minister for Railways Pawan Kumar Bansal announced on Wednesday will burden millions of travellers across the country. But that burden had become inevitable given the fact that, while the cost of operating the railways has been going up over the years, passenger fares remained largely unchanged in the past decade. For far too long the railway fare has been treated like a holy cow, and successive Ministers in charge of the portfolio have baulked at the idea of increasing passenger tariff even when it became necessary to have the hike, because it was seen as politically unwise.

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