The new railway minister Mamata Banerjee has never believed in travelling miles to keep promises but now the die has been cast and she has to deliver. In her new avatar as part of government where her usual fire-spewing Opposition rhetoric does not have much of pride of place, Banerjee is making all sorts of promises with little regard for the possible fallout; her inexperience with the worldly ways of government has still not percolated to the realisation that there are no prizes for defeat in the corridors of babudom of Delhi. And it is not as if the bureaucrats are not making notes of every statement that she is making. In fact, the Railway Board chairman, V.K. Agarwal, made short shrift of his minister's’promise in Calcutta on Saturday when he said that the losses of the department were so huge that the first imperative was to raise resources. In fact, contrary to the minister’s assertions over the weekend, Agarwal said that he could not possibly say whether fares would not be raised; there was simply no guarantee. There is no point in holding anything against what Agarwal has to say. He does not have a constituency, neither does he have the goal of pleasing people to occupy the highest executive chair of his homestate. What he has, as he faces the Press, are cold statistics and it is these statistics which say that the railways is in the red and there is no way that anything can be done unless wasteful expenditure is reduced and logical thinking is introduced at every decision-making level without the frillings of electoral promises and public gimmicks.

That is one lesson that Banerjee has to learn. Her supporters say that she has all the good intentions; we have no reason to dispute that. Her followers point out that she is working even on a Saturday; we have no reason to disbelieve that a young , dynamic lady with the first sightings of a ministerial responsibility should be doing anything . But her promises should not be hollow. She is now a national minister not a mere regional chieftain. Responsibility should now be her only concern where one word alien to her nature _ accountability_ would mean a lot to the country’s people. She has to now think of that.