Lalu brought paradigm shift to Railways:RSS defends Rail Budget

New Delhi, Mar 1 (UNI) With a view to complementing the Railway Minister Lalu Prasad , Organiser, the RSS mouthpiece today praised him for bringing paradigm shift for the Railways behemoth and complemented him for not playing a 'gentleman thief' in his 2008-09 Railways Budget.

Organiser, the RSS mouthpiece in its forthcoming issue even had critical comments on the past Railway Ministers who sought to treat Railways as a 'sanctuary for heavy weight politicians' and for inflating their 'bloated ego trips.' Before Lalu, Railways used to be a 'neglected area' with each budget turning out to be 'virtual audits', resulting in routine hikes on both passenger and freight tariffs. ''Like it or not, Lalu has brought paradigm shift for the Railways and his ways of finding new avenues for boosting the revenues for the massive Public Sector behemoth was commending,'' the paper commended.

The Railways Minister, the paper said, had presented a feel good budget and laid track for full blown election talk, announcing concessions across the board for freight and passenger fares.

The paper also took a dig at Finance Ministers of the country whose ability to keep fighting the deficit, by overburdening the tax payers by asking them to learn a few lessons from Mr Prasad's experiment.

Marginal reductions in fares to compete with low cost airlines would not mean much for a country on the fast track of globalisation but the very thought of competition must be appreciated.

Arguing in favour of Mr Prasad, the mouth piece said some economic journals seem to comment derisively on the benefits accrued to the long distance travellers but he did not resort to archiac idea of playing Peter to pay Paul. ''He was a monumental failure as Chief Minister in Bihar, hence the huge credibility gap,'' the paper observed stating that ,''he has really done something for the common man and definitely proved to be the only minister in the ruling UPA coalition to make a mark.'' UNI MCN AE KP1840