Day 256

Today morning, I read the newspaper. The main news article which caught my attention was the roll back of the railway fares of the ordinary second class, mail/express second class and sleeper class. AC coaches were left because the majority of the general public doesn’t travels in the AC class. I don’t know what to say about this. Should I call this as the Robin Hood nature of Mamata Banerjee or should I call this as her monopoly? Sometimes, in coalition government, the power of threat to withdraw the support plays a crucial role. Same thing was done by Mamata Banerjee. Actually she is wearing a mask over her real face. She pretends to be pro common man. She pretends that she is concerned about them. But in reality she is against the development of the country and the common man. That’s why she replaced Dinesh Trivedi with Mukul Roy. Now the Railway is going to loose about some Rs 3000 crores due to the roll back of passenger’s fares. This deficit will be met by borrowing from the Finance Ministry which now will pass the burden on the common man in the form of indirect taxes. And this burden would be much more than the burden of the increased Railway fares.

I think that this is just a political game played by Mamata Banerjee to gain some popularity. The general public isn’t seeing the true picture. Let’s take an example. Suppose a person is travelling a distance of 2,500 kilometres, then with the proposed hike of 5 paise per kilometre, he would have paid Rs 125 extra. But now this Rs 125 is saved but with the increment of the excise duty from 10 percent to 12 per cent, he has to pay minimum Rs 500 extra on the consumer durables. Now which one is more costly? Rs 125 or Rs 500? I think you people are common man with common sense who can differentiate the difference. So I would like to ask a question. Would you still say that Mamata Banerjee is concerned about the common man? Or is it her political stunt only?