Please go back in history when our didi was the first time railways minister.She made an interesting speech - she gave hints at how the rail ministry can cut down passenger fares substantially by alternate sources of revenue. Within a few fortnights she was conveniently shunted out of her portfolio. Mr.Pramod Mahajan was brought in through the backdoor as It minister and the first thing that he did was to scuttle the Rail Board initiative on a optical fibre network. As usual the media played dumb. Two large telecom giants came into lime light promising their own network.A few states obliged by giving them a free reign. both the companies -Reliance and Airtel - gave up.In between you found BSNL functioning deteriorate. Lines were cut and repairs did not take place. Somehow after a a year the giants realized that their idea was not that bright.BSNL came back with a bang with their low tech mobile and surprised everybody.
the missing link is what I term as the optical fibre scam. the Indian railways have perhaps the longest network in the world today.It covers most of the country. If we had the optical fibre run below the tracks ,it could have been done by trench less digging (ike Hong Kong tube).The lines would have been laid within a fraction of time and all that all service providers needed was the last mile connection from nearest railway station. cities like Mumbai would have become a broadband (i mean 54mb level) a decade earlier .The railways could have generated millions of dollars by leasing out and the moneys would have provided enough moneys for addition, upkeep and maintenance of rail stock leave alone reducing fares.
Corporate greed and manipulative politics played a big hand and our media was acting as usual. As the corporates were giants all political parties kept silent - maybe no one understood anything of the subject
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