The slow, but surely changing face of Indian Railways

Indian Railways has come a long way and still has a long way to go. There has been a number of empty slogans and huge budget outlays since a decade to ensure cleanliness is maintained on the stations  and services are improved. However, most of them haven't taken off.  The number of aggressive measures by the Govt since last year offers some real hope.

One of my friends commented when Modi talked about "Golden Quadrilateral of bullet trains connecting India" that a bullet train won't solve a problem unless Railways improves its quality of service both inside and outside the trains. It is very true that we can't simply have bullet trains when Railways fail to provide some basic services or upgrade its quality drastically. At the same time bullet trains must be executed.

There is a perceptible change in which Railways has improved with respect to providing services in the last 1 year. There are several ones and I thought I should highlight some of them as they play an important role in understanding how they are changing for the better, This is a sincere start of providing tangible services to passengers for the first time since decades.

The expectation is so high from the current government that people are looking to see radical changes. For me the day the first bullet train starts in India is a whole new revolution in itself. No matter how many people have varied opinions the presence of bullet train will create gigantic changes in the economy.

1) Aggressive pace of introduction of bio toilets in Indian Railways:

In 2011 only 57 bio toilets were introduced and then it was 169, and 1337 in 2013-14. However, in 2015 the number has drastically jumped to 17,000. Another 17,000 will be installed this year. All newly built coaches do have this and DRDO's patent design is being used in the Railways. This is a very important initiative that is gaining momentum, According to several reports(source) the fitting of bio toilets has been saving Rs.350 crore annually on manually removing the waste and costs Rs. 3 lakh for fitting in a coach. This often is not even cleaned manually in a proper manner. The absence of bio toilets will surely make our tracks worse and stink beyond explanation.

These bio toilets convert the waste into gas form when cleaning. However, people can be insane and can throw bottles, cigarette butts in these and there should be proper awareness spread about it. The list of trains fitted with these ones are listed in the source here

2) Cleaning up New Delhi Railway Station with frequent cleaning by private players

Now even though it is still a long dream to see our train stations cleaned and maintained well, a start has begun in New Delhi Railway Station.

This link in Times of India contains pictures and more stats on how the station is being cleaned

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/slideshows/infrastructure/swachh-bharat-abhiyan-how-new-delhi-railway-station-has-been-cleaned/tidy-job-by-railways/slideshow/47229309.cms

Not sure how long this will be kept clean.

3) E catering of food on 76 trains in phase - 1:

Passengers can order food at www.ecatering.irctc.co.in or call the toll-free number 1800-1034-139 or 0120-4383892-99 to avail the facility. IRCTC has tied up with Pizza chain such as Dominos and MTR for providing different types of food to be delivered to the passenger fresh. Once the booking is made a one-time password is sent to the registered mobile number (required at the time of delivery). The food is delivered only between 6 am - 10 pm and payment can be made online or by card.  The website will list all the trains stations where food will be delivered and the types of food. 

In the event train reaches late or cancelled there is a small fees and the difference will be refunded. (Source)

4) Increasing the refund for Tatkal tickets and changing the window of the booking

The refund for Tatkal tickets has been increased to a maximum of 50%. Also, the window of booking for AC Classes is 10-11 am and non-AC is 11 am onwards. This dedicated booking slot is to ensure there is no overcrowding or surge in online booking.

5) To prevent agents making bulk reservations of tickets and then selling at a higher price - This was a bad practice and a loophole quite easily exploited by station agents and affected customers who could not get tickets from IRCTC website between 8 am -12 noon. If any such tickets are booked somehow and passengers have it then the agent and the passenger - both will be penalized.

Here's an interesting news item that explains how the agents are making black money affecting actual passengers whose tickets never get confirmed.

6) To use preloaded Ru-Pay Debit Card to make purchase on the website.

7) Book 120 days in advance as against the existing 60 days.

8) Cash on Delivery for tickets for those customers who are apprehensive of using their credit/debit cards online

9) SMS intimation on cancelled or delayed train status. Refer http://www.indianrail.gov.in/railway_SMS.html for more information such as PNR alerts, Train status, Availability, schedule etc

10) Operation 5 minutes - where a ticketless passenger can get a ticket within 5 minutes of boarding the train. There is no need for printing the ticket and the confirmation will be stored on the user's smartphone and cannot be cancelled once booked. This is in its pilot stages and will be available soon for all smartphone users

11) Enhancing IRTC website to handle more ticket bookings daily:

Currently, The website can handle only 1.2 lakh tickets/day. Now, it is increased to 4 lakh tickets/day. This is a phenomenal increase and has been achieved because of installation of new software and increasing the capacity of existing servers.

The problem is the speed of the trains we have is too slow. We are still in 18th century world where the speed of the train is still less than 80 km/hr for 99% of the trains. This speed is so slow and pathetic that we are easily centuries behind. The right step is to introduce more semi-high speed and high speed trains. One good initiative so far being taken is Delhi-Agra train. This can run at 160 km/hr and can reach Agra well within 1 hour 10 mins. However, there are 8 other paths where trains have been selected to run at that speed but there is no momentum in that direction.

Overall the direction is encouraging even if far from inspiring.