railway minister sadananda gowda used his budget on tuesday the first major policy showcasing of the modi government to signal its intention of using private sector investments both domestic and foreign as the prime engine of growth and modernization having got rid of the difficult part by hiking rail fares and freight charges late last month gowda could focus his budget speech on the new governments vision for the railways and he did just thatread also modi sheds populism baggage from rail budget the governments vision clearly has a major role for the private sector in everything from new projects and freight terminals to cleanliness and food on trains and at stations as gowdas speech made clear it is our target that bulk of our future projects will be financed through ppp publicprivate partnership route he argued that while hikes in fares and freight charges were necessary to sustain financial viability it would be unrealistic to depend solely on such an approach to raise the resources needed for modernizing the prime national transporter thats why the minister said his ministry was seeking cabinet approval for allowing fdi in the sectorread also govt to allow fdi in suburban rail corridors stations gowda was at pains to point out that successive governments in the past had announced new projects with abandon falling prey to the nasha intoxication of claps but had been lax in implementing them to the extent that some were pending for three decades in contrast he said the focus now would be on prioritizing projects in particular doubling and trebling of lines to decongest major routes would get the nod ahead of new lines which have typically been unviable in keeping with this line of shunning populism and in a radical departure from historical practice the minister did not announce any new projects in his budget though there were a slew of new trains including those announced by the upa in the interim rail budget and extensions of existing ones gowda also castigated earlier governments for failing to raise passenger fares and thus creating a situation in which the loss per passenger kilometre had risen from 10 paise in 200001 to 23 paise in 201213read also railway finances hang by 6paise thread describing the noughties as the decade of golden dilemma the dilemma of choosing between commercial viability and social viability gowda said while the railways would continue to fufil social obligations doing so beyond a point was not possible without compromising on efficiency and safetyrailway minister dv sadananda gowda left and minister of state for railway manoj singha hold up their briefcases at parliament house before presenting the railway budget 201415 on june 8 2014 toi photo by yogesh kumar despite the procorporate and proreform tone of the rail budget stock markets reacted adversely with the sensex shedding 518 points its biggest singleday decline in 10 months the slump was attributed by market analysts partly to the absence of details in the budget