Railways Budget, Lalu, News channels and attitude of good citizens

To say that I fully understood the budgets will be a big, fat and white lie. I have not managed to make and stick to a budget at my own home as yet, all I can do is imagine about the magnitude of planning and strategy decisions that goes into a country's budget!

The day when Indian Railways Minister was supposed to present the budget, since morning 7 AM, most news channels were showing things like how Lalu was brushing his teeth, serving himself brakfast, walking up to his car and so on. How disgusting !

News channels urgently need to re-invent themselves.

Coming to the budget, the one thing I liked the most was the newly introduced on-board cleaning system. Indian railways sucks in that aspect and it was long due. But can the railways maintain cleanliness single-handedly ? NO! Cleanliness is an attitude and needs nurturing by every individual. In a country where people live in filthy conditions in acute poverty, does that come naturally for everybody? NO! So in my opinion, at least the people who can make it an attitude easily, let them maintain cleanliness of railways as much as possible, and rest of the work can be done by the authorities. What I have seen is that, people normally feel that anyway it is so filthy, what more damage I will do if I throw my dirt then and there itself ! Basically, itna kachda hai, thoda aur dalo, kya farak padta hai ! The same guys when they go to USA or some other country that values cleanliness, suddenly they are the most well-behaved citizens! Come on yaar, if you are not a hipocrite, behave the same way in your motherland ? I mean what stops you from maintaining the same attitude? Same thing they do with driving, but that will require another topic and another day ...

Now coming back to cleanliness, Lalu's railways staff can clean up the mess created by people who are unknowingly creating the filth, others should behave themselves.

And I sincerely think that the railways budget had good planning for the future, in terms of re-designing coachs, reducing ticket price, taking baby-steps towards more electronic-based access and so on. Now it will boil down to the execution, but whatever the minister could do, he seems to have done it well... good show, and with the amount of profit the railways has started showing after Lalu becoming the minister (assuming that they are audited, blah blah and are real and there is no major scam involved in it), I only have praises for the minister.