Railway Budget 2011: Ignoring North East once again!

When Mamata Banerjee became Railway Minister of the country, it raised some hope among the people of east India (specially North East India) where the railway sector is least developed. But as couple of years have passed, it has become clear that she is no better than the former railway minister Lalu Yadav, or may be even worse. Lalu's budgets were Bihar centric and Mamata's budget nowadays are Bengal centric. She has crossed all limits probably this year, ahead of Bengal assembly elections. Sacrificing the national interests she is mainly trying to woo the voters in Bengal. The budget 2011 has brought 56 new express trains in India and like it has happened many times before, none of these new express trains connect North East to the rest of India. Earlier Mamata Banerjee introduced a special class of trains called "Duronto" (with no official stoppage between upto the final destination) which became very popular due to their efficiency. But she did not think of sending one such train to North East (seven states). This time she has given a consolation to the North East people saying that out of these 56 new trains, one train will be running between Guwahati and Dimapur. But is it enough? In fact, we would have been happy even if this train was not introduced. There are other trains between these two stations and people often travel by bus also. What North Eastern people need more is couple of good trains to places like Bombay, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai where there are large number of students, workers from North East are living. To Delhi at least we have a good train called Rajdhani Express. She is also proposing that Manipur capital Imphal will be connected by railway network very soon..let's see how soon it happens. Such budgets which are being proposed with an eye to grab some votes in state assembly elections(Bihar, Bengal or whatever) will never be able to satisfy the needs of the country and North East will always be ignored like before.