No bragging, no big bang announcements. As anticipated, the first railway budget presented by

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Mamata Banerjee on Friday was more like a thanks giving speech that was full of political overtones and populist measures.

Keeping her word that the budget will be ‘of the people and for the people’, Mamata Banerjee came up with lots of goodies for all and sundry.

There were no fare hike for rail passengers. Industry and exporters reeling under economic slowdown were spared from a hike in freight rates. Banerjee announced 57 new trains, a new scheme ‘Izzat’ for people with less than Rs 1,500 monthly income, ‘only ladies’ trains in Delhi, Chennai and Kolkata suburban and ‘Yuva’ trains for the youth.

Unlike her predecessor Lalu Yadav who was feted by business schools for turning the Railways into a profit-making enterprise, Trinamool Congress chief attempted at an image makeover that fits into social inclusion agenda of UPA.

“Are the fruits of development to be restricted only to privileged few and not to the teeming populations in remote and backward areas of our country,” she asked in her budget speech.

She announced setting up of an expert committee to advise her on innovative financing and implementation of ‘economically unviable’ but ‘socially desired’ projects.

Banerjee accorded highest priority to passenger amenities in the budget that has something for every section and region. However, West Bengal and Bihar continued to be fulcrum of the 57 new trains to begin services this year. A new train service christened ‘Duronto’ which means ‘restless’ in Bangla was announced. It simply means that a dozen non-stop trains will operate between select cities. She also extended connectivity of 27 trains and increase frequencies for 13 more.

Banerjee promised to end serpentine queues at reservation counters by adding 200 new towns and 800 locations to the passenger reservation system. For passengers, struggling with unreserved tickets, now there would be 3,000 more unreserved ticketing systems. Not just that, by the year-end passengers would be able to receive SMS update on waitlist, berth and coach numbers.

For easy reservation in rural areas, 5,000 post offices would sell computerised rail tickets. Safety would be accorded priority by installing ultrasonic flaw detecting machines and wheel impact load detectors. Beside, the implementation of anti-collision devices would also be extended on 1,700 km across southern, south central and southwestern regions.

For passengers worried over security, it’s time to relax. The railways would revamp and implement an integrated security scheme for 140 sensitive stations. There would be more commando battalions and women RPF squads deployed on the stations.

To remove filth at stations and coaches, the minister announced expansion of on-board house keeping scheme to cover 200 additional pairs of trains. There would also be environment friendly green toilets on trains as in aircraft.

The railway minister managed to keep private sector happy and hoping with her huge PPP (public private partnership) offers in segments like building 50 world-class stations, commercially developing unused railway land and in setting up of a new loco factory in the vicinity of politically volatile Lalgarh on West Bengal-Jharkhand border.