“We are reminded of the song ‘Maar diya jaaye, ya chhor diya jaaye” (Should we kill you or should we leave you) in a Hindi movie during a sequence where the hero was tied.” Literally for four days it was that kind of situation for the much vilified ex-railway minister Trivedi and the Indian railways - he was almost tied to a tree and paradoxically being pulled in two directions.

Sophisticated Jaswant Singh feared the rail budget should not be left as an orphan child in a street corner.

On 19th March, 2012 the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh ultimately announced the resignation of Dinesh Trivedi – albeit with regrets over his departure as the railway minister. The PM had said, “Trivedi had presented a budget which promised the “vision” outlined by his predecessor Mamata Banerjee.”

Trivedi’s resignation was sparked off after Trinamool leadership, especially its mercurial Mamata Banerjee was left anguished by his budget proposals for hiking the passenger fares. “This is not in our DNA to bring in fare hikes which would have adverse impact on common people,” summed up senior Trinamool leader and MoS Urban Development Minister Swagat Roy.
 
“I regret the departure of Shri Trivedi,” the Prime Minister said in Lok Sabha with several members from Congress benches remarking, “We also regret.” In a veiled attack on his mercurial alliance partner Ms Banerjee, Dr Singh said Trivedi had “presented a Railway Budget that had promised to carry out the Vision 2020 outlined by his predecessor,” apparently referring to the TMC chief.

In the rail budget 2009-10, Ms Banerjee had outlined the Vision 2020 as a blueprint for modernising the railways. However, Ms Banerjee, who had air-dashed to Delhi, to press for Trivedi’s ouster and coronation of her dutiful loyalist Mukul Roy, strongly defended the decision to replace Trivedi. In doing so, she wanted to show the Congress and the Prime Minister their position. “It is my right to decide who will be the railway minister just as Sonia Gandhi can decide who should be the Prime Minister of the country because she is the leader of the Congress party,” Mamata said tongue-in-cheek.

All said and done, the ultimate truth is that the vulnerability of Congress has been exposed.

Confusion as Genesis:

That the party MPs were caught unawares by Trivedi’s proposals came to light as separately emerging out of Lok Sabha, another Trinamool leader and MoS Tourism Sultan Ahmed initially maintained that the rail minister has done a “satisfactory job under difficult situations”. He also almost endorsed the hike saying that the impact would not be much. However, soon Mamata Banerjee’s trusted aide from ‘Kolkata team’ – who was camping in Delhi - got in touch with party leaders and made it clear that the fare hike was “not acceptable”. The party leaders maintained that Ms Banerjee was not against reforms but it can not be at the cost of “sadharan manush” - a key element of the party’s famed slogan Ma, Mati Manush (Mother, Homeland and People).

Railway is helpless, cried Trivedi ! Railway is tired and helpless, Dinesh Trivedi read out while underlining the financial crisis haunting the railways and the daunting task he faced while presenting the rail budget. To tide over such a crisis which he described as vulnerable, he made an announcement of breaking an eight-year populist trend under his predecessors in the rail budget by proposing an across-the-board hike in passenger fares to augment from Rs 4000 to Rs 6000 crore additional revenue to the kitty. Among other salient features of his budget proposals included proposal for introduction of 75 express trains, 21 passenger trains and extension of 39 trains besides increase in the frequency of 23 trains. Asserting that his emphasis as railway minister was on improving safety, he had maintained that death on rail tracks would not be tolerated. For these he announced setting up of Railway Safety Authority as a statutory regulatory body and aimed for ‘zero death’ on tracks.

Apparently, instructions were also passed on to Trivedi in the noon that after the customary media briefing of the railway minister in parliament premises he should avoid giving television interviews.

However, contrary to the party line, the railway minister remained unfazed by the attack on him by his own party for raising rail fares and gave a series of interviews to television channels from his office in Rail Bhavan.

In fact, the minister remained firm about his “no roll back” approach asserting “if there has to be a roll back, then it should be roll back for rail safety as well”. He even had strong words saying that for him, the nation and the family would come first and second and then the party as priority number three.

This provoked the leadership and Mamata, who was in Nandigram, the citadel which changed her political fortunes, to take strong exception. “This calls for review of his intent and entire performance. A disciplined soldier does not speak about his family getting precedence over anything else,” a key aide of Mamata told Eastern Panorama.

In what is being interpreted by his detractors in the party as a veiled attack on Banerjee’s functioning as the railway minister, Trivedi claimed that he “has taken the railways out of ICU”.

Artful Betrayer:

Thus the writing was clear on the wall. Within hours, Mamata sent in a fax to the Prime Minister recommending that Mukul Roy should be made the new railway minister. What followed is recent history.

As expected Congress played some double games, delayed the process – threw in mixed signals and of course, ultimately, like an artful betrayer handed over Trivedi’s head on a silver platter. Predictably, a hapless Dinesh Trivedi was called a ‘pawn’ though the man, who sided with Mamata during her turbulent days has denied the description.

Rail crisis: Forewarned in 2001 The present financial crisis facing the Indian Railways did not happen all of a sudden. Rather it is the accumulation of years of negligence and poor management. The crisis was forewarned way back in 2001 during the erstwhile NDA regime. But hardly anything was done under successive railway ministers Nitish Kaumar, Lalu Prasad and Mamata Banerjee to bring about any turnaround. In 2001 an expert group headed by former RBI deputy governor Rakesh Mohan had cautioned about impending debt trap, sources say adding it was cautioned that in 15 years, the Government of India will be saddled with an additional financial liability of over Rs 61,000 crores. Instead of taking corrective measures on the contrary the talk about ‘surplus revenue’ as was claimed during Lalu Prasad era only kept the hard facts under the carpet. The alleged jugglery of figures prevented authorities from taking hard measures in “capacity utilization, reduction in unit costs and improvement of quality services”. The panel had recommended “increase of second class fares by 8-10 per cent over the next eight years.” The group had also suggested downsizing of the mammoth 1.5 million workforce by 2.5 per cent every year for five years – that is between 2001 and 2006. But nothing had moved

However, political watchers know very well that Trivedi, obviously not a novice in politics, was playing based on certain hidden ‘strengths’. Whether the source of that strength was the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, the country’s original reform mascot or not remains a puzzle. The other version is that Dinesh Trivedi has been let down by some of his friends in the Congress. This club could be anybody from Janardhan Dwivedi, a fellow Gujarati and Congress President’s trusted General Secretary or even Ahmed Patel to Trivedi’s new-found friend Sam Pitroda. After all, they say, on March 14th, the day the crisis broke, he spent the evening with Sam and even allegedly declined to interact with Trinamool chief whip in the Lok Sabha, Kalyan Banerjee stating that he was “busy in a meeting”.

Some sympathetically say that Dinesh Trivedi has committed political suicide. This school of thought fails to understand the reason he had to go against Mamata when the going was all good. “A matured handling would have been to say I have presented the budget, now it is for the Parliament to decide,” says a Janata Dal MP.

But to err is human. And most often, one has to pay the price. Now, whether he is a ‘modern day Bhagat Singh’ or a pawn abandoned – the answer lies in the womb of time.

Ultimately, however, what matters more is how much the Indian parliamentary system has suffered and how much would a cash-starved Indian Railways continue to suffer due to populism.