A hocus-pocus budget.

India is the only country in the world with a separate budget for its railways and yesterday it was presented for us to admire by the Railway Minister, apparently the first from Congress in 17 years. So obviously it was full of hocus-pocus to confuse the public. We are told that passenger fares have not been increased. Not true. Fares have been increased twice already before the budget. The Congress being expert at increasing taxes on every aspect of life the same expertise has been applied to train fares. This time they are called charges. So Reservation Fee has been increased from Rs 35 to Rs 60 in AC First Class and from Rs 25 to Rs 50 in AC Second Class. Likewise Reservation Charges for AC Chair Car, AC 3-Tier and AC 3- Economy have been increased from Rs 25 to Rs 40. This is in accordance with Congress philosophy which is that ordinary people in India are no better than animals and do not aspire to travel in comfort. They will be deeply grateful to be able to travel in overcrowded, non-AC coaches, unable to lie down, boiling in summer and with stinking, filthy, fly ridden toilets. Hence these have been rightly called " Cattle Class ". Cancellation charges of all classes have been increased from between Rs 5 and 50. Trains are always full because we Indians cannot afford air travel so to make sure we book our tickets 3-4 months in advance. This often necessitates cancellation of tickets because of medical or other emergencies. So, we end up paying for cancelling our tickets and the Railways then sells these seats to new customers with Reservation Charges. That is double taxation. Supplementary Charges on superfast trains trains, which would mean Rajdhanis and Shatabdis, have been raised from between Rs 5 and 25. This is only possible because under this Congress government taxes on air travel have been raised so high that ticket prices have more than doubled and so called low cost fares are now as high as normal fares. Secondly, Kingfisher was forced out of business to force Vijay Mallya to sell majority stake in United Breweries, which controls 50% of the drinks market in India, to Diageo while the highly corrupt Air India, with debts of over Rs 500 billion, is being kept alive with taxpayer money. Finally, Tatkal charges on all AC coaches have been raised from between Rs 15 to 100. This is a highly corrupt business practice wherein a large number of seats in any train is withheld from sale till 48 hours before departure, apparently to help people who have to travel urgently. These tickets are highly priced and you do not get any refund in case of cancellation. This is a blatant case of black-marketing and price gouging by a monopoly service. Freight charges have been increased by 5.8% because of increased price of diesel. This will naturally add to inflation especially on food. You have to admire the Congress.