Report by Kamgar Ekta Committee (KEC) correspondent
The continued opposition to privatisation of operations of British Rail by passengers and rail workers from the beginning has finally forced the British government to revert to renationalisation. The private train company servicing parts of southern England including London became the first to be returned to public ownership under a government plan to renationalise the entire network of Britain’s railways within two years.
The UK government has announced that it will end the “fragmentation” of Britain’s railways by handing control of mainland Britain’s railways to a new public sector organisation called Great British Railways (GBR). The new organisation will be responsible for both trains and tracks.
The rail operations in Britian were privatised in1990’s, by allotting different routes to different private companies. However, the rail network remained public, run by Network Rail. This was a very illuminating example of what in our country is called PPP (Public Private Partnership). It is obvious that private companies go where there is profit, while the public bears the investment and the losses: in short, profit is private, losses are public.
It is no surprise that passengers suffered frequent cancellations – private companies did not run trains if there were not enough passengers to ensure profit. Routes with low traffic were discontinued thus depriving people of those areas of rail service.
They also had to face high fares. Like airline fares in India after privatisation, train tickets in Britain were high when the demand was high! Further, as the network was divided between different private players, there used to be confusion over which services a particular ticket could be used for.
If the passengers suffered, so did the rail workers, in terms of lower salaries and oppressive working conditions.
In India, starting with the Debroy Committee Report, the privatisation of British Rail was promoted to be the model to be followed by the Indian Railways. Now that the railways in Britain are to be renationalised, the very same authorities have not a word to say about that!
Earlier, when railways were privatised in Argentina, the experience was same – very high rise in ticket prices, the closure of less frequently used routes and overall deterioration in the quality of services. In that country rail safety was Also heavily compromised, leading to horrible accidents with the loss of many lives. Massive public protest had forced the government to renationalise the Argentinian Railways.
All the world over, even in the US, which is the stronghold of capitalism, rail passenger services are subsidised by the government.
Rail is the cheapest and environmentally the least harmful form of public transport It should be promoted instead of being curtailed as that is what happens when it is privatised.
Essential services like the railways should not be opened up for profiteering. It is the government’s duty to provide cheap, affordable, quality transport services. When the government subsidises public services, it is not doing some meherbani (favour). It is merely people’s money that is being used for them! Workers in public enterprises should not come under the pressure of making these services profitable.
Instead of fulfilling this duty, we see successive governments in our country extracting more and more from the people by way of increased taxes, both direct and indirect. On the other hand, they are slashing whatever existed by the way of public services and channelising it into the pockets of big corporates.
We need to overcome all barriers of various affiliations, unite in a mighty force to oppose privatisation in any form. We must demand that the governments uses people’s money for people’s welfare!