Indian Express (
08 Sept 2016 ) carries following news report :
" Railways
to introduce surge pricing for Rajdhani, Shatabdi, Duronto trains "
"
The Ministry of Railway on Wednesday
said that it will introduce flexi
fare pricing in its Rajdhani, Duronto and Shatabdi trains from September
9.
The fares will increase by 10 per cent with every 10 per
cent of berths sold.
“The
base fares will increase by 10 per cent with every 10 per cent of berths sold
subject to a prescribed ceiling limit. There will be no change in the existing
fare for 1AC and EC class of travel,” a railway ministry release said.
While
10 per cent of the seats will be sold in the normal fare in the beginning, it will go on increasing
by 10 per cent with every 10 per cent of berths sold with the ceiling limit at maximum 50 per cent
depending upon the demand
"
Now
even as some State
Governments ( and possibly central Transport Ministry ) , are seriously considering forcing
Uber / Ola
taxi-share operators to give up their practice of Surge Pricing , Shri Suresh Prabhu ( Railway
Minister ) must find lakhs of crores of rupees to modernize our ancient and
dilapidated train services
Over the decades , one after another
Railway Minister ensured that the railway passengers did not have to pay for
the actual / real cost of running these trains
They
took the easy way out by keeping Rail Fares much below the cost , by incurring losses ,
subsidized by tax payer
money !
But Shri
Prabhu says :
" This cannot go on for ever
! People must pay the true cost of this service
!
Aren't people paying varying prices for Petrol / Diesel for some
years now ? At one time , these too were
highly
subsidized
and if govt tried to raise these ( mostly thru annual budget ) , there used to
be riots on the streets !
Now these get adjusted every fortnight and no one even notices !
Economic law of Demand and Supply must dictate the prices , from
time to time "
No doubt , Shri Prabhu !
But
under this very Law , when existing operators start making tons of profit,
dozens of competitors
enter that field and increase the " Supply " to catch up with the huge " Demand "
In
turn , that increased
competition forces the incumbents to drop their prices to match the new
operators and the Consumers gain
Precisely
, what is happening for the past few weeks in the Mobile Telephony Services , with arrival of Reliance Jio !
But the question is :
Will
NDA government permit private
sector companies to lay down rail tracks and compete with Indian Railways ?
If so
, that would be GREAT , because Indian Train passengers will have " Options " to choose
from !
You must not say , " Heads I win , Tails You Lose
" !
Incidentally
, in order to increase " Supply " , here is what the Central Transport Ministry and
the State
Governments should do by :
# Encouraging Kali-Pili taxi owners to form their own Mobile App
based " Share Taxi
" scheme to take on Uber /
Ola , playing by their " rules
" , by installing Digi-Met
/ Fare-Calc , as
recommended in my blog,
"
Tablets in Taxies " { http://myblogepage.blogspot.com/2016/05/tablets-in-taxies.html }
#
Enabling many more private sector Start Ups to launch, " Share-Bike " /
" Share-Rickshaw
" operations
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
08 Sept
2016
www.hemenparekh.in
/ blogs
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