The Congress lost its majority in Parliament long ago; it then had to reconcile itself to forming coalitions. That involved sharing ministries. The Congress liked to keep important ministries like home and finance to itself; its allies, enjoying a few uncertain years in power, preferred lucrative ministries. The Raja affair resonates in public memory because he was the first minister to go to jail for corruption. But there were many earlier, luckier allies who made hay and bowed out safely.

Their favourite cash cow was the railways. If ministers were to make money, they had to have flunkies who were good at it. If flunkies were good at making ministers rich, they were also likely to look well after themselves. That is how the railways, once run with exemplary efficiency by British companies, became one of the government's sleaziest arms after nationalization.

That suits both politicians and bureaucrats; but Narendra Modi is intent on cleaning up the railways. His first railway minister was D.V. Sadananda Gowda. Gowda acted swiftly; he appointed a committee of estimable people under Bibek Debroy's chairmanship to look at the railways and suggest how to reform them. But in September 2014, Gowda's son, Karthik, made the wrong kind of news: just as he prepared to marry, an actress accused him of having married her before, and dragged him to court.

So in November, Modi brought back Suresh Prabhu from the wilderness to be railway minister. Prabhu met senior railwaymen, and found them upset with Debroy, who met them and forced economic logic upon them. They had their own recipe about what needed to be done with the railways. Prabhu was persuaded, and based his budget speech on their ideas; he also issued a white paper embodying their data and views, and promised a vision document later in the year.

Faced by this high-level sabotage, Debroy worked hard; he submitted an interim report in March, and the final report in June. The final report has not been published; but it is probably not very different from the interim report, whose principal recommendation is a changeover to commercial accounting. What does that mean? There was a time when the British monarch levied whatever taxes he liked. But then, the subjects found that inconvenient, and insisted that his impositions must have their approval. That is how the practice of presenting an annual budget to Parliament arose. That was before the invention of double-entry book-keeping. The railways' budgetary practices are still stuck in that era; the Debroy committee wants to bring them into the 21st century.

What difference would it make? Just now, capital expenditure - on tracks, stations, power lines and so on - is shown in the budget, but their depreciation is provided for rather approximately. And potential costs and contingent liabilities are not provided for. What the committee is saying is that accounts should be streamlined to take care of these things.

I do not see what difference that would make: the accounts would show currently unaccounted costs, and reduce the railways' profits - perhaps turn them into losses. But the railways have neither the freedom to raise their fares and freight nor an obligation not to make losses. What the railways need is a change in price policy; unless they can charge fares to cover costs and generate money for investment, change in accounting practice would make no difference.

The pricing decisions the railways would face are evident even without doing too many calculations. The railways charge generous profit margins on freight, and use the extra money to subsidize passenger fares. The low fares increase demand for passenger services, which the railways meet by running more trains. That too increases losses. Altogether, the railways make enormous losses, so they have no surplus to invest; nor can they borrow or attract new capital. There is a powerful vested interest behind the low fares in the form of the masses who jump on a train whenever they want to go home or anywhere else. Overcrowded trains also make it impossible to collect fares from ticketless travellers; that adds further to the losses. The railways try to reduce losses by charging absurdly high first-class fares. So most people who have money prefer to fly; those that travel first class in trains are politicians and senior government servants who travel free.

The Debroy committee's answer to rampant underpricing is a regulator, who would presumably force rational pricing on the railways. The railways would continue to be subservient to a minister; but the regulator would not be. He would report to Parliament, as the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India and the Securities and Exchange Board of India do. They send off a copy of their annual report to every member of Parliament. The MPs mostly throw away the copies; they hardly ever ask a question. A railway regulatory authority will evoke as little interest. But if it tried to raise fares or cancel loss-making trains, the MPs will let it have it. So in my view, a regulator will make no difference; the railways will continue to be run uneconomically.

What would make a difference is if Parliament enacted that railways' losses would be reimbursed, tout de suite, by the finance ministry. If the finance minister suddenly found thousands of crores being frittered away by the railways without his permission, he will wake up. He will ask Parliament to raise some taxes so that he can finance the losses, or to empower him to fix railway fares and freights. Or he would ask for the railways to be corporatized. That would not be a solution, because the railways would then become just another sick enterprise; while sick enterprises are perfectly all right in industries where they are not essential, the railways can hardly be allowed to go sick and stop running services.

But maybe, when the Debroy committee advocates commercial accounting, it really means that the railways should cover full costs and make a profit - that they must become financially viable. That is a good idea, but a regulator cannot implement it. It can be done only by a minister; he must have a mandate from the prime minister, and must be given time enough to implement it. Suresh Prabhu is that minister; he is thinking of a long-term plan as his promise of a vision document suggests. He should go and ask the prime minister for supreme power for five years. He should consult the comptroller and auditor general, and ask him to recast railway accounts into a simpler format appropriate for a modern commercial undertaking. Next, he should go around the country, meet senior railwaymen, get half a dozen of the best into the railway board, and ask them to produce two plans - one, for restructuring the railway manpower, and one for aligning fares and freight to costs. If he gets that far, he will be well on the way to repairing the railways.