Bravo! Mr. Trivedi (Indian Railway Minister)

It takes guts to increase fares of public services in a country like India. People seldom realise that fares cannot be keep artificially low in the name of public welfare for a long time. In a deficit budget country like us, the fares cannot be kept abysmally low for years together esp. when the costs are running up like anything.
Also charging abysmally low fares results in not enough revenue generation for proper maintenance of resources & services. This results in further degradation of services.
Many people will immediately ask – 1st raise the service level then the fare, unfortunately they do not realise that the service levels have gone down because of negligence due to a) lack of revenue generation & b)apathy of staff (partly the reason for this is most people do not raise questions about the poor service they just “adjust”, probably with the hope of benefiting sometime down the line!).
All those politicians who are worried about common man aka “aam admi” should start a Railway Fund & contribute to it. Let Railways say what should be the optimum fare level and all these people determine what should be charged to the public, the difference let them contribute.
Mamta didi & others must realise the Government is not a “Kamadhenu” nor “Akshya Patra” to have unlimited resources that they can use for winning Elections. If they want to keep prices low, start contributing and stop utilisation of public resources.