page_title: Lalu Prasad Yadav
section_title: 2004–2009: Railway Minister
hierarchical_section_title: Lalu Prasad Yadav / Political career / 2004–2009: Railway Minister
caption_attribution_description: High-profile politicians Lallu Prasad Yadav, Ram Vilas Paswan and Amar Singh join a rally in Mumbai.
context_page_description: Lalu Prasad is an Indian politician from the state of Bihar. He is the president of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, former chief minister of Bihar, former UPA minister of railways, and former member of Parliament of the 15th Lok Sabha.
  He entered politics at Patna University as a student leader and was elected as then youngest member of the Lok Sabha in 1977 as a Janata Party candidate at the age of 29. He became the chief minister of Bihar in 1990. From 1997 to 2005 his wife Rabri Devi ruled as the Chief Minister of the state. His party came to power in 2015 Bihar Legislative Assembly election in partnership with Nitish Kumar of JD, but Nitish Kumar dumped Prasad's party from power in July 2017.
context_section_description: In 2004, Yadav contested general election from Chhapra and Madhepura against Rajiv Pratap Rudy and Sharad Yadav respectively and won from both the seats with a huge margin with the great support and faith of people of Bihar. In total, RJD won 21 seats and it allied with Indian National Congress becoming second-largest member of UPA I after Congress. Yadav became the railway minister in the 2004 UPA Government. Later, he gave up the Madhepura seat.
  As railway minister, Yadav left passenger fares untouched and focused on other sources of revenue for the railways. He banned plastic cups from being used to serve tea at railway stations and replaced those with kulhars (earthen cups), in order to generate more employment in rural areas. Later, he also said that he had plans to introduce buttermilk and khādī. In June 2004, he announced that he would get on the railway himself to inspect its problems and went on to board the Patna railway station at midnight.
  When he took over, the Indian Railways was a loss-making organisation. In the four years under his leadership, it showed a cumulative total profit of Rs.250 billion (US$5.2 billion). According to CAG, it was the new practice of issuing a "statement of cash and investible surplus" that helped Lalu project a rosy picture. In 2008, the profits shown were ₹25,000 crore (US$3.5 billion). Schools of management became interested in Yadav's leadership in managing the turnaround The alleged turnaround was introduced as a case study by the prestigious Indian Institute of Management. Yadav also received invitations from eight Ivy League schools for lectures, and addressed over a hundred students from Harvard, Wharton and others in Hindi.
  Harvard Business School and HEC Management School, France, have shown interest in turning Lalu’s experiment with the Railway into case studies for aspiring big graduates.
caption: Yadav together with Ram Vilas Paswan and Amar Singh at a party rally in Mumbai during the 2009 general elections
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