By Admin 
Railway Budget: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the country’s general budget on 1 February i.e. Sunday. This will be his ninth consecutive budget as Finance Minister. First he presented the budget in 2019. Every person, every sector, every class of the country has high expectations from the budget presented tomorrow. Meanwhile, we are going to tell you about an old tradition related to the budget, which has now been broken.
This practice started during the British era
We know that the budget includes many different sectors like defence, health, education. Railway budget also comes under this, but do you know that earlier the railway budget was presented separately. The tradition of presenting the Railway Budget separately started in 1924 during the British era.
During that time, it was argued by the Special Committee that the budget of Railways is very important and big, hence it cannot be handled under the normal budget. Even after the country gained independence in 1947, this tradition continued without any interruption for 92 years. Under this, the Railway Minister used to present the Railway Budget a few days before the Union Budget, which contained details of earnings, expenditure, fares and freight rates.
Why did the decades old tradition end?
Till the financial year 2016-17, the Railway Budget was presented separately before the Union Budget. In 2017, the BJP government came to power at the Center under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and since then the Railway Budget was merged with the General Budget of the country. In fact, the campaign to abolish the separate railway budget gained momentum in 2016 following the recommendations of a committee headed by economist Bibek Debroy under NITI Aayog.
In a paper written by Debroy and economist Kishore Desai, the committee argued that India was the only country that was still following this practice and that it no longer served any practical purpose in modern public finance. In the paper, it was advised to include railway finance in the Union Budget to modernize financial management and present a clearer picture of government expenditure.
This proposal of the committee was discussed within the government. The then Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu supported the committee’s proposal. Later, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley took the matter to Parliament, in which it was also discussed in Rajya Sabha. Jaitley presented the first integrated union budget for 2017–18, officially ending the separate railway budget.
What was the benefit of this?
There were many benefits of including the Railway Budget in the General Budget. First of all, the time spent in preparing it and debating it in Parliament was saved. Due to this, the dividend received from the Railways to the government ended, which reduced the financial burden on it.
Its objective was also to create better coordination between the transport sector, railways, roads and waterways, so that infrastructure planning could be done under a single unified framework. This also brought a lot of transparency because now the income and expenditure of the central government was shown in a single document, making it easier for the Parliament and investors to scrutinize the finances.
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