Topic: Indian Railways

This is a well-meant and well-presented article, but the headline is – alas – utterly misleading! One only hopes this is a case of bad editing, and not a deliberate attempt to obfuscate facts or mislead.
If, as the article itself establishes, the Government of India (‘Modi’s government :)) is indeed paying 85% of the cost of running a Shramik Express, surely it is perfectly reasonable for the GOI to state that it is paying 85% of the cost of sending a migrant home? Again, as the article makes clear, the remaining 15% of the cost of running the train usually comes from tickets; and in the case of the Shramik Express, this 15% is met by either receiving state or sending state.
O Print Editor, please do proofread your own headlines!

What is the break-up of the 85% cost being incurred by the centre?
If one sees any railway ticket, it is mentioned as a standard disclaimer that the price any passenger is paying for the ticket covers only 57% of the cost incurred for the travel. This is under normal circumstances and for every ticket sold by railways. For the Shramik trains, only 2/3rd of the seats would be filled to ensure social distancing during travel. So the right seat and the left seat would be occupied with the middle seat being empty. Or the top birth and bottom birth would be assigned with the middle birth being empty. As such, due to this, the chargeable fees would come down to 38% (to the passenger, which is supposed to be paid by the state). The trains, since they are special trains, would come back completely empty, thus, the cost to passenger is further divided by half, which would be 19%. After taking into account passenger services like food and sanitation, the state governments were asked to pay 15% of the total cost with the remaining 85% being borne by the central government.

A 15% cost has been imposed on the state government to ensure that the state government too has skin in the game. As such, if the travel was made completely free by Railways and the Central government, passengers other than migrant workers would have also been boarded on those trains and the result would be chaos like we saw in states like Maharashtra, during the protests near Bandra mosque or even the chaos at Anand Vihar bus station. It was because of this that the states were given the responsibility to come up with a list (after screening) of passengers and central railway is to provide tickets and trains. To impose responsibility, the Railways asked the states to cough up 15% of the travel cost while the central government would make good 85% of the travel cost.

What did the SG says, based on whose statements, The Print lied
The Solicitor General during the hearing answered a very specific question asked by the Bench.

The question was regarding the FARE for the migrant workers, to which, the SG said that it was being paid by the states. The fare alone constitutes only 15% of the cost as even quoted by ThePrint. Hence, to use his statement to peddle a fake narrative reeks of an agenda.

ThePrint should perhaps read and understand its own reports
Let us post a riddle to Shekhar Gupta – who is President of Editors Guild and has a long and allegedly respectful career in journalism, bulk of which was in newspapers.

A long-standing newspaper, like The Times of India, has 48 pages. The newspaper is sold for around Rs 5 and about 40 per cent is taken by distributors. The media organisation gets around Rs 2.40. Now each page costs Rs 0.25 to print and printing 48 pages costs Rs 12. A very conservative cost of paying employees and news agencies etc is Rs 3. So, if newspapers are produced at Rs 15, while the consumers pay just Rs 5, will it be logical to say that only consumers are paying for news? Obviously not. This information is, in fact, taken from a report published by ThePrint itself.

Shekhar Gupta himself knows that advertisers pay and that the government also pays indirectly not only through ads, but through subsidised newsprints, etc. And if a newspaper is running into losses, essentially the promoters of the newspapers are “paying”. However, this logic, which is applicable to running newspapers goes for a toss when it comes to running trains, evidently. Then Shekhar Gupta’s website assumes that whatever is being paid as the final fare is the only price being paid to run a train, and whoever is paying that price is the only party paying. In the case of Shramik trains, the final price of the tickets are just 15% of total operational costs like the final price of the newspaper is just 33% of the total operational cost. Yet, Shekhar Gupta’s website dishonestly reports as if the final price is the only thing that matters.

It is pertinent to note here that Shekhar Gupta’s ThePrint had categorically suggested that opposition parties spread fake news about the Modi government in order to counter the work done by them. It seems ThePrint led by Shekhar Gupta has gone a step further and taken up the mantle itself and is spreading fake news not just to discredit the Modi government but also give credence to lies spread by the opposition parties.

So much lies, they have no shame. How can they even get sleep at night?

This govt at the centre has nothing to offer to the public except lies. This was the same solicitor general who told supreme court that there are no migrants on the streets. Lies,lies and lies that’s all this govt is.

this has been a “govt of lies blatant lies and nothing but lies” whether it is economy, welfare, and scheme after scheme. they lie courts , they lie to the media, they lie to their own constituency and repeat them adopting fascist methods. go on repeating a lie for it to be taken as truth. disgusting

Whilst, the Centre and states fight it out as to who should foot the bill, migrants suffer and die in their thousands.

As the Kenyan proverb goes:

“When elephants fight, grass suffers”

Looking forward to some posts on this article by our local friends from the IT Cell, eg. Shri Dev and others. Surely they must have some thoughts on anything which improves the lives of sons of this soil.