Railway Budget 09-10: Youth and students

KOLKATA: The student and youth brigade gave a big thumbs-up to the Railway Budget 2009-10 on Friday as Mamata Banerjee announced a slew of initiatives for Gen-Next. 

Among the several proposals outlined by the union railway minister, one of the most appreciated was the Yuva air-conditioned (AC) trains dedicated to the young generation where one would have to pay Rs 299 for distances upto 1,500 km and Rs 399 for distances upto 2,500 km. 

The new low-priced fast train service will be started to connect youth and low income groups in rural hinterlands to major metros/cities. The train will run from point to point for distances ranging from 1000 km to 2500 km. For starters, a weekly service will be introduced as a pilot service within three months in the Mumbai to Delhi and Delhi to Kolkata sections. 

Priyadarshika Das who’s studying architecture in Cuttack, Orissa was all praise for the move. "That’s a huge discount from the current fares. Many students who are studying in other states can’t afford AC fares when they are travelling home. This is great for them," she said. At present, fares in a mail/express train’s AC chaircar for distances around 1500 km hover around the Rs 840 mark, while for distances of 2500 km, they come in at around Rs 1100. 

Student concessions too, were aplenty. 

The free monthly season tickets for second class travel between school and home for girl students up to graduation and for boy students up to 12th standard is proposed to be extended to students attending madrasa, high madrasa and senior madrasa. 

This concessional monthly season ticket scheme has been extended for travel in the Kolkata Metro rail, Kolkata and would also be applicable to students attending recognised vocational institutions. Metro concession would be 60% of the regular fare. Scholarships will be introduced for the higher education of girl children of railways’ Group ‘D’ staff. Salma Khatun is delighted. 

"This is a very welcome initiative by the railway minister. I only hope that all the measures are implemented and don’t just remain at the proposal stage." 

Rohan Jaikishen, IIM Kozhikode’s Batch of 2010 was gung-ho about the Budget as well. "The initiatives taken by our railway minister are encouraging. While many may dismiss this as a political gimmick, I believe that the youth centric measures taken by Ms. Banerjee will benefit the student community immensely. I am particularly excited about the scholarships for higher education of girl children of group D staff and is a clear indication that the ideal of inclusive growth shall be implemented wherever possible. Even the Yuva trains initiative is very well thought out and will make urban colleges and schools accessible to the youth of rural India thereby providing them better education opportunities."