Former bureaucrat Ashwini Vaishnaw, a direct entrant to the Union Cabinet, is set to face a plethora of challenges as the new Minister for Railways, ranging from increasing non-fare revenue, running private trains, replacing old infrastructure and handling the sensitive issue of disinvesting public sector units.
Vaishnaw, an MBA from Wharton School, Pennsylvania University, and M Tech from IIT Kanpur, chose to talk about increasing benefits to the common man as he took charge as the Railway Minister on Thursday morning.
“Railways is a major part of PM Modi's vision. His vision for railways is to transform the lives of the people, that everyone — common man, farmers, the poor — gets the benefit of railways. I will work for that vision,” he said.
Vaishnaw, a Rajya Sabha MP from Odisha since 2019, has taken over the charge of Railways from his predecessor Piyush Goyal who continues to be at the helm of the Ministry of Commerce & Industry and the Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution and has gained the additional charge of Ministry of Textiles.
Previous roles
A former IAS officer of the 1994 batch, Vaishnaw worked as the District Magistrate-cum Collector of Balasore and Cuttack districts and earned appreciation for handling the devastation caused by the super cyclone that hit Odisha in 1999. His contribution to the public-private partnership (PPP) framework in infrastructure is also expected to help him in his work as the new Railways Minister.
He also held leadership roles across major global companies such as General Electric and Siemens after finishing his higher studies.
Vaishnaw takes over the Information Technology and Telecom Ministries from Ravi Shankar Prasad at a time when there are lots of changes in terms of new policies like the recent IT Rules, along with issues i.e. companies like Twitter not following the new rules. There is also the upcoming Personal Data Protection (PDP) Bill.
In Telecom, he has to start work quickly to take care of projects like BharatNet to meet the Prime Minister’s promise of connecting six lakh villages within 1,000 days. The PM, in his speech on August 15, 2020, had made the announcement.
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