An Indecisive Indian

  Union Budgets are meant to be moments of stock-taking and signal setting. As the Finance Minister speaks, priorities are revealed not merely through allocations, but through emphasis, intent and, at times, carefully choreographed silence. For Indian Railways (IR), that silence has now evolved into a full-fledged policy instrument, not accidental but “carefully budgeted”, with footnotes “strategically camouflaged”, delivering clearer signals than most speeches manage. Once a standalone spectacle, the Railway Budget was the annual confession booth where ambitions were proclaimed, inconvenient truths reluctantly admitted, and the nation’s transport backbone subjected to public cross-examination. Since its merger with the Union Budget, however, IR has been quietly demoted to a footnote. Vast operations, stubborn structural problems and a permanently fragile financial balance sheet are now squeezed into a few lines and a cluster of tables buried so deep in the documents that their...