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'Fas Gaya', in colloquial Hindi, means 'being stuck', trapped in the problems of everyday living. You know that life could be better, but you do not know if that is ever going to happen. You believe that you have no better options. However, our lives – both personal and professional – and our world are full of options, and every problem comes with several attached solutions. A few persons, who prefer to remain anonymous, apply their minds to some problems that plague Indians and they show how small changes in thinking processes can move mountains. We give here some glimpses of their ideas.

For more details please refer to: www.fasgaya.com

The ultimate toilet training classroom is on an Indian Railways train!

No Indian can consider himself to be completely toilet trained, unless he has successfully used the toilet on an Indian Railways train) or in a railway station waiting room bathroom.

A well-travelled friend has compiled some helpful tips for the benefit of those who have to respond to nature's call when they are on a train. He has published these tips in a small booklet which he calls "The Ultimate Train Toilet Training Manual". The training manual is applicable on any Indian Railways train.

Here are the important parts of the manual:

1. Open the toilet door (if the handle is not missing) and enter carefully (so as to avoid any filth on the toilet floor).

2. 2. Spend a minute (or two) getting acclimatized to the typical railway toilet smell.

3. Check to see whether the fixtures are fixed on the water taps (they may be stolen at times).

4. Check whether the taps work, and whether the water flows through the tap when the tap is opened.

5. Check whether the washbasin is clogged with filth.

6. Check whether the toilet flush is working.

7. If the toilet is Western type, check whether the seat is dry and undamaged. Don't be shocked if the seat is missing or is on toilet floor.

8. If there is a mug, there will be an anti-theft chain attached to it; ensure that this chain is not too short for the mug to be effectively moved around after the 'job'.

9. When you have finished the above checks, you may start on the 'job', unless the checks have taken so long that the train has come to a halt at some station. If the train has halted at a station, please control yourself and wait until the train is on the move again.

It may often happen that the toilet does not pass the above checks. In that case, you have the following options:

1. Cancel your journey.

2. Control yourself till you reach your destination.

3. Go by air (and suitably edit this manual for airline toilets).

4. Be practical and use the toilet anyway.

5. Be practical, use the toilet anyway, and hope optimistically that the Indian Railways top brass will clean up their act.

After reading the training manual I have some simple suggestions, which are ridiculously easy to implement:

1. Train toilets should be routinely checked by railway housekeeping supervisors at a few stations along the route.

2. Just like there are flying squads to check tickets, there should be surprise housekeeping checks in trains and in waiting rooms.

3. Railway authorities spend a lot of time trying to keep railway premises clean. However, unhygienic toilets are more dangerous than dirty buildings and platforms.

There is so much talk now of a SWACHH BHARAT, a clean India. How can this possibly happen when the Indian Railways – the country’s largest and most widespread public body – is so disgustingly careless about its public toilets? Swachh Bharat should include Swachh Indain Railways toilets.

The most illustrious passenger of the Indian Railways is now a mascot of India’s Clean India campaign. Would he have approved of such toilets? His name was Mahatma Gandhi.

One affected indian Bakra/bakri in the service of the people of India.

Computers work wonders, but the ticket reservation computers of Indian Railways produce miracles too!

Being a frequent online buyer of train tickets, I have observed that – a few hours before the train’s departure time – many hopelessly wait-listed tickets get transformed miraculously into confirmed tickets, within seconds. Since God will not waste precious time on such a mundane matter, it is obviously some human beings who are behind this last-minute transformation and, since I am unable to understand how they make this transformation possible, I consider it to be a man-made miracle. I call it the miracle of wait-listed tickets. When I am able to explain this miracle rationally, I will brand these instantly confirmed tickets as ‘Maggi Wait-Listed Tickets’ – of course with the permission of the makers of the high-speed noodles which are sold under the same name.

3 types of people buy tickets online: the pessimist, the optimist and the realist 
There are three kinds of online ticket buyers. There is the pessimist who will never buy a ticket which is wait-listed at anything above No. 5. There is the optimist who will take a chance up to No. 25. The realist – the seasoned traveller who is familiar with the suspiciously temperamental railway reservations software – knows that he will eventually get a confirmed ticket even at No. 55. The third kind is the realist. The realist will often go in for high wait-listed numbers which even the most reckless gambler will not bet on.

I am the realist kind, and I have seldom been denied a confirmed ticket. I may have been at wait list No. 55 until almost the last minute, but when the final chart is prepared I find that the entire waiting list and RAC list ahead of me have cleared and I (plus a few others behind me too) have graduated to confirmed-ticket status.

The realist is a realist because he frequently experiences the everyday miracle of a hopelessly wait-listed train ticket being transformed into a comfortably confirmed ticket in the split second during which the current reservation status displayed on the computer screen is frozen into the final reservation chart. He sees this happen for all trains, at all times, in all divisions of Indian Railways. He knows that the computerised reservation system is the same throughout the country – equally ‘miraculous’ for all.

Take a look at how the ticket booking system works Some people buy tickets on the internet, using the Indian Railways online reservation system. Others buy tickets at railway booking counters, but the clerks at the booking counters use the same Indian Railways online reservation system. Both kinds of tickets – those bought online by individuals and those bought at railway booking counters – simultaneously use the same system, in real time. Both categories of ticket buyers are therefore confirmed or wait-listed on the same list, and a wait-list number is displayed for unconfirmed tickets.

At some fixed time before the train’s departure, a final reservation status chart is printed for display at the railway station. Until that time, you see a small note on your computer screen whenever you check your status, a note which innocently states: Please Note that in case the Final Charts have not been prepared, the Current Status might upgrade or downgrade at a later stage.

Why should the current status in the final reservation status chart differ from the current status on the online reservation system when the print command is given to the computer to print the chart? How can as many as 55 wait-listed tickets get confirmed suddenly, within seconds? One possible reason is VIP Quota tickets, but there cannot be 55 VIPs travelling on short notice! As this happens in second class as well, it is difficult to imagine that so many VIP’s travel second class! Also, ‘ordinary’ passengers sometimes masquerade as VIPs, which cannot happen without the collusion of fairly senior railway staff. (It may be a good idea to restrict last-minute VIP passengers to just before chart preparation.)

How do hopelessly wait-listed train tickets get confirmed miraculously, the moment chart is prepared? Is the computerised system jinxed, or is it fixed by corrupt officials?

The only explanation for the last-minute sprint from wait-listed to confirmed status could be that the computerised reservation system is being manipulated by touts in collusion with a few corrupt people within the system, including the IT department of Indian Railways. It is possible – and routinely rumoured – that touts buy confirmed tickets in bulk in different names and then sell these tickets at a premium to those with genuine wait-listed tickets. Helped by railway insiders, it seems that these crooks even have the ability to manipulate names and other identity details of passengers.

I hope I am proven wrong when I suggest that there is something fishy going on. Any system designer will tell you that such a massive computerised system cannot possibly be so crookedly faulty over an extended period of time, unless the motive behind the system is deliberately crooked.

A system audit of the online reservation system, by an external agency, can quickly plug these loopholes. The touts and their cronies can be easily trapped.

The surprisingly confirmed wait-listed ticket is not a God-sent miracle. It is the outcome of a man-made scam.

One affected indian Bakra/bakri in the service of the people of India.

The Indian Railways time-table is designed to delay trains! Strange, but very true

The late running of trains is a serious issue. With 13 million passengers travelling daily, a delay of just 10 minutes means a daily loss of over two million man-hours. Can Indian Railways repair the damage it is doing to its customers – the travelers? Can it give back the 250 man-years lost on a daily basis back to the people of this Nation?

This is a national shame.

The Indian Railways has an officer called Director (Punctuality) who merely collects and disseminates information about delays. However, the analysis of the root causes behind delays, and their elimination, are beyond his purview, so it seems!

In the last article I had talked about how train delays are caused due to the practice of assigning fixed priorities to every train regardless of its current position along its route. I had also suggested a possible solution.

This article suggests a simple and practical way to reduce the overall delay.

Imagine you are travelling to Chennai from Ahmedabad by Navjeevan Express. While preparing the time-table, the premise used by Indian Railways is that the time taken by the train has two components – the running time and the time spent on waiting for signals, non-availability of platforms, scheduled halts at stations along the route, waiting for some VIP, etc. The running time is correctly taken as the total distance divided by the train’s planned speed; reduced to minutes per kilometre, it varies according to the type of train – Shatabdi, Rajdhani, Superfast, Express, etc.

However, the waiting time is also calculated on the basis of minutes per km! How can the waiting time be related to the distance? This serious conceptual blunder, as we will see shortly, adds hours of delays to the elapsed time between stations.

The assumption that waiting time increases with kms travelled is wrong, because waiting time is an isolated event, a one-time event. There is a chance that the train does not have to wait at all for any reason and moves ahead smoothly. There is also a chance that it sometimes has to wait for a long time. The delay can occur right at the beginning, before the train starts, or it can occur within a km of its start, or it may occur after 300 kms, or it may not occur at all. The waiting time has no connection whatsoever with the kms travelled.

Assume that the 120 kms distance between Ahmedabad and Vadodara takes 90 minutes and the waiting time – including the scheduled halts at the two junctions in between – is 30 minutes, calculated at 15 seconds per km. So the arrival time at Baroda is calculated as the departure time (say 6.15 a.m.) from Ahmedabad plus 90 minutes plus 30 minutes, that is, 8.15 a.m. If the halting time at Vadodara is 5 minutes, the departure time at Vadodara is published in the time-table as 8.20 am.

Now, assume that there is no waiting time for this train between Ahmedabad and Vadodara, except for the 5-minute scheduled halts at the two junctions in between. So, the train will arrive at Vadodara at 7.55 a.m. (6.15 a.m. plus 90 minutes running time plus 10 minutes for the two scheduled halts). Since the scheduled halt at Vadodara is 5 minutes, the train can leave Vadodara at 8 a.m. However, the time-table shows the departure time from Vadodara as 8.20 a.m. So, the train is detained for 25 minutes (8.20 minus 7.55) at or before Vadodara, that is, 20 minutes more than the scheduled halt time. The additional 20-minute ‘forceful detention’ of Indian Railways’ customers is totally unnecessary. Had the time-table been prepared showing the departure time from Vadodara as 8 a.m., allowing for a halt time of 5 minutes at Vadodara, this idle time of a trainload of people could have been totally avoided.

Assume now that the train encounters some delay, say of 20 minutes, before it reaches Vadodara. At Vadodara, it will be as though it is on time with the current system of preparing the time-table.

On 80 per cent of its journeys the Navjeevan Express reaches Vadodara at 7.55 a.m., and we have ‘saved’ 20 minutes. Why should we lose this 20-minute saving at Vadodara itself? Instead, why not keep it available for the train’s journey further ahead?

The system I propose is that the departure time from Vadodara should be shown as 8 a.m. in the time-table. So, in most cases, the train will be running as per schedule. On the few occasions that it is delayed, only the people boarding at Vadodara will be affected.

Why waste the 20 minutes gained up to Vadodara (as per the old time-table method) at Vadodara station itself? Why not save them for possible use during the remaining part of the journey? This saving can go on accumulating up to a point, say 60 minutes; this 60-minute cushion which can be used for unexpected and unavoidable delays further along the route.

The saving, storage and use of this stored time along the train’s route can release millions of man-hours daily for more fruitful activity. It can significantly reduce the total elapsed time from source to destination for all trains, which in turn will lead to better utilisation of the available trains. You will have more trains running, more punctually, and with no addition of rakes at all!

The implementation of this system to produce time-saving time-tables can be computerised and applied all across Indian Railways.

To speed things up on Indian Railways, first revamp the time-tables. Bullet trains, though welcome, cannot reduce or bring back millions of man-hours lost daily.

One affected Indian Bakra/bakri in the service of the people of India.

Our railway trains are usually late, but the delays are mostly avoidable

We all experience the unpredictability in the arrival times of railways trains. The only predictability is that they will be late, though we can never predict how late they will be. Often, the train is almost on schedule till about 5 kms from the destination, and then it gets delayed by at least 30 minutes.

The reasons offered by Indian Railways are: we do not have powerful engines, the tracks are not strong enough for higher speeds and, of course, the absence of bullet trains! The complacent assumption behind all these excuses is that the problem is with the inadequacy of hardware.

If it is indeed the hardware that is to blame, then how does one explain that it is usually in the last 5 kms before the destination that the delay happens?

Has anyone considered improving punctuality in spite of the existing hardware? If hardware is the only constraint, will the advent of bullet trains guarantee punctuality?

Common sense suggests that hardware is by no means a crucial bottleneck. Let us consider the existing approach to punctuality. The Indian Railways has an exalted official who is designated ‘Director of Punctuality’. His role seems to be mostly clerical: print train schedules, collect related information and disseminate this information. No effort is made to monitor whether schedules are being adhered to and study and act on the root causes behind frequent schedule disruptions.

In our view there are fundamental conceptual flaws that are responsible for the delays, and these flaws will continue to plague the Indian Railways even if hardware constraints are removed. These conceptual flaws can be corrected immediately, whereas it will take decades for the hardware to be upgraded.

The first conceptual flaw is that the Indian Railways fixes the priority of all trains, and this fixed priority cannot be changed. It is this fixed priority which guides the controllers at the various stations to decide which train to permit into the station first, which second, etc. In other words, the order in which the trains waiting outside a railway station are permitted to arrive at the station platform that becomes free is the fixed order set by the authorities; there is no scope for the controller to actually control according to his on-the-spot assessment of the situation; the controller on the scene is in fact controlled by the fixed priorities set earlier in some office far removed from the scene. This is a very common scene at all junctions, along all routes!

Here is an actual example:

1. The Dadar-Chennai Express, waiting to enter Arkonam Junction, just one station before Chennai, is running an hour late.

2. Another train, this one from Chennai to Bangalore and with a higher priority than the Dadar-Chennai Express, is running on time and also waiting to enter Arkonam Junction.

3. Following the present system, the higher priority Chennai-Bangalore train is allowed into Arkonam Junction first, thereby adding further to the one-hour delay of the Dadar-Chennai Express.

4. The point that is missed is that the Chennai-Bangalore train has nearly 270 kms in which to make up for the small delay that will be caused to it if the priority at Arkonam is now shifted to the Dadar-Chennai Express (which has only 65 kms in which it can make up for the time already lost).

As you can clearly see, the rules often defy common sense. The concept of a specific train having a fixed priority irrespective of its location on the route and irrespective of the actual situations of other trains on the route is fallacious. The actual situation along the route, and not some fixed rule, should dictate train priorities.

We can come up with an algorithm that ensures that the cumulative delay of all trains is restricted to the absolute minimum on a daily basis. A software based on this algorithm can continuously prescribe the order in which trains can arrive and depart from stations. Controllers can then use this software to effectively control train movements into and out of stations. This can first be tried out in those critical routes and junctions that contribute the most to the delays in running of trains.

We must remember that people waiting in trains and on platforms costs India millions of man-hours of productive time every year, not to mention the idling railway infrastructure.

Two afterthoughts:

1. Why are trains with VIP passengers always on time?

2. Do VIPS travel on trains nowadays?

One affected Indian Bakra/bakri in the service of the people of India.

When you buy a train ticket online, you cannot upgrade it on the train, not even if berths are going empty!

While planning an urgent Chennai-to-Rameshwaram train journey I had to buy a 3rd AC RAC ticket since 2nd AC tickets were available only on a wait-listed basis. When I boarded the train I saw that a few vacant berths were indeed available in the 2nd AC coach. I therefore requested the TTE (Train Ticket Examiner) to upgrade my 3rd AC ticket to 2nd AC; I was of course prepared to pay the fare difference. The TTE informed me that an e-ticket cannot be upgraded on the train. He was only authorised to upgrade tickets which had not been bought online. He said that he did not know why this rule exists; he only knew that it exists.

So, several berths on the train went empty, and the Indian Railways lost valuable revenue. Also, some person was deprived of the 3rd AC berth which would have become available if my 3rd AC ticket had been upgraded. I am quite sure that this is not an isolated incident. Hundreds of TTEs must have been confronted by this situation thousands of times, and our government must by now have lost sizeable sums of money.

Who is responsible for this? Some ‘wise’ persons in the computerisation wing of Indian Railways? The TTEs who do not provide the feed back to their bosses? The bosses who ignore the feedback? Or, to repeat a cliché, are we Indians like that only?

For all you know, most TTEs may even be happy that such a stupid problem exists, because they can make a small fortune by selling these vacant berths ‘offline’ to passengers who are willing to pay a suitable bribe for unofficial receipt-less upgradation.

What sense does it make for the government to lose revenue for such incredibly stupid reasons?

Throughout India, in almost every government department, citizens find it terribly inconvenient to pay to the government what is legally due to the government. Whether it is income tax, service tax, excise, municipal taxes or electricity bills, hundreds of barriers are erected to prevent us from paying our dues conveniently and quickly. Sometimes, we are even compelled to pay ‘below the table’ for money to be accepted ‘above the table’.

There may be some reasons – no doubt unethical – for people to bribe in order to receive benefits from the government, but what earthly – or unearthly – reason can there be for people to bribe in order to give benefits to the government?

Getting back to the e-ticket up-gradation problem, here is an amateurish suggestion which may help in many other ways too:

1. Give a handy tablet to the TTE so that he can upgrade any ticket, calculate the fare difference, and record the receipt of the cash received.

2. The tablet will enable the TTE to instantly know the availability of berths throughout the train, and quickly allot them to RAC passengers.

3. The TTE will be able to inform, online, booking counters at other stations along the train’s route so that wait-listed passengers at those stations can also be accommodated.

Some such system will immensely benefit passengers and ensure that there is optimum occupancy of the train’s capacity. Win-win situation, since both passengers and the Indian Railways benefit. And, to ensure that any errant TTE is compensated for any loss of bribe money, TTEs may be given a bonus proportional to the ‘on-train ticket up-gradation revenue’. As a necessary precautionary measure, all empty berths should be compulsorily logged on the tablet.

To develop a workable system, Indian Railways should rope in the help of 10 to 15 TTEs, depute them to brief some of our fancy IT companies, and then ask these companies to develop ticketing solutions which optimise train capacity utilisation, penalise reservation staff and TTEs for unsold berths and seats and reward them for sold berths and seats. This, or some simple variation of it, can be made to work so that the Indian Railways can become a more viable enterprise.

Either you develop a solution as suggested above or least, stop such a stupid rule as “ e-tickets cannot be upgraded” from getting implemented, as a first step, effective immediately.

Solve the ticketing problem, and a lot of important problems will automatically get sorted out. The Indian Railways is by and large a great public sector company which is often compelled to subsidise many services. It cannot afford to subsidise stupidity too and facilitate corruption.

One affected Indian Bakra/bakri in the service of the people of India.

Did you know that Indian Railways needs 7000 mobile food outlets to serve meals to 13 million captive customers, DAILY?

That’s right: 13 million people travel, DAILY, on 7000 passenger trains of Indian Railways. The food available to these 13 million captive customers, on the trains and on 6800 railway stations, is usually unhygienic, tasteless, shoddily served and certainly not worth the price.

Left with no choice, the customers accept what is on offer, or carry their own food.

Indian Railways have now decided that railway catering needs to be looked at afresh. They are toying with the idea that passengers should be offered ‘branded ready-to-eat meals, in all express and mail trains, from reputed brands such as ITC, Kohinoor Foods and Kellogg's’. I do not dispute the fact that these brands are reputed, but do they have a track record of cooking and delivering the kind of food that the average Indian would prefer to eat on a train journey? People want wholesome and nutritious food on a train journey, not snacks and fast food.

It seems that this decision to offer branded foods is based on the positive feedback of a pilot project and a subsequent survey. However, was the survey carried out only on mail and express trains, or on the less glamorous and slower passenger trains too? Did the survey cover only the passengers who eat railway meals, and not the vast majority of passengers who avoid the railway meals and bring along their own food? My gut feeling, emanating from my years of travelling on Indian trains, tells me that the AVERAGE Indian passenger does not relish and cannot afford branded ready-to-eat meals.

Here are a few unsolicited suggestions to Indian Railways from some of their customers, that is, people who travel by trains:

A. Seek the professional help of organisations which have a proven record of supplying fairly wholesome meals – not snacks – to thousands of persons daily. A few examples of such professional organisations are:

1. Large religious trusts which serve meals to thousands of devotees daily.

2. Large hospitals which serve nutritious meals to thousands of patients daily.

3. Big schools which serve meals to thousands of students daily.

4. Large industries which run excellent industrial canteens to serve meals to their workers.

5. Some of the state governments which have an enviable record of handling school mid-day meal programmes.

6. NGOs which serve mid-day meals to government schools. For instance, the Akshaya Patra Foundation serves mid-day meals to 1.3 million school children every day.

The above examples are not imaginary. If you stop to think about it, you will realise that your own region or district has several institutions which have an excellent track record of preparing and supplying acceptable low-cost meals daily to thousands of customers. For example, Vadodara has at least one institution in each of the above 6 categories.

B. In each railway zone, invite private companies like ITC, Kellogg’s, Kohinoor, McDonald’s etc., to replicate the above meal production facilities and quality standards, ensure adherence to the quality standards, and incorporate the latest packaging technologies.

C. Separate the production and distribution activities. For instance, there could be 50 franchised production centres all over India and 500 distribution agencies (franchised by the Mumbai Dabbawalas maybe?).

When it comes to cooked food production we have a lot to learn from India’s big-kitchen institutions. And when it comes to managing distribution, the Indian Railways could possibly take some tips from Mumbai’s Dabbawalas.

Do my suggestions appear to be improbable? Well, once upon a time, an organisation like the Indian Railways would itself have appeared improbable. But now we do have 6800 railway stations, and 7000 passenger trains carrying 13 million passengers daily all over a sprawling country. Serving acceptable and economic meals and tea and coffee and water on this railway network should be child’s play in comparison. Are we not the same country that just sent a little gadget all the way to Mars, that too the only country in the world so do it successfully the first time?

One affected Indian Bakra/bakri in the service of the people of India.

An Indian Railways Advertisement Written In a Dream
There is now so much talk going on about a new India that I have started dreaming that utopia is round the corner. Last night I had a dream. I dreamt that the Chairman of the Railway Board rang me up and asked me to write an advertisement inviting applications for the post of General Manager of Western Railway. I even drafted the advertisement in my dream. Here it is:

Western Railway Requires
A General Manager (Passenger Comforts)

Who Is Still An Aam Aadmi
 
Experience: 15 years as a senior officer in Indian Railways, with appropriate experience of travelling in air-conditioned upper-class coaches and staying in upper-class waiting rooms. However, you should still be an aam aadmi.
 
Job Description: 

  1. You will have to travel, in disguise, for 15 days every month, in various trains and in various classes.
  2. On these journeys you will have to stay in both lower-class and upper-class waiting rooms.
  3. You must buy, and use, your own tickets: unreserved, wait-listed, RAC, reserved, Tatkal. You will not be permitted to use your office staff or your friends or your relatives to buy your tickets.
  4. During these 15 days you will eat only the food available on the trains and on railway platforms.
  5. You must carry your own luggage, or you may use the services of coolies, but you may not use railway staff. 
  6. All expenses will be reimbursed, without any questions, with or without supporting bills, as long as they are adequately described.
  7. On your train journeys, you will have to immediately note down your observations and suggestions and submit them online directly to the Railway Board. For this you will be provided an assistant with the necessary online communication equipment; this assistant will always travel with you. You will also have to solicit and record the feedback of some fellow passengers.
  8. During the remaining 15 days, you will have to work closely with the General Manager (Passenger Services Delivery) to ensure that all passenger feedback and your observations are seriously taken into consideration by the other departments of Indian Railways and acted upon wherever possible.
  9. If your suggestions are implemented, Indian Railways will duly publicise the contributions of the various departments which participated in the effort.
  10. If your suggestions cannot be implemented, Indian Railways will advertise this fact too and solicit the help of other consultants.

Salary: Rs. 1,000,000 per month, plus/minus a variable sum depending on scientifically obtained passenger feedback. You will receive a special attractive bonus for every possible passenger problem which you can identify BEFORE the passenger complains about it.
 
Please apply quickly, before I wake up!

One affected Indian Bakra/I in the service of the people of India.

How Does The Tout Know More About My Train Ticket Than I Do?
I wanted to buy a general (not Tatkal) train ticket recently, and I was told that no confirmed tickets were available. There were several trains but only wait-listed tickets were available, different wait-list numbers in various classes in different trains. I asked the booking clerk which train and which class gave me the best chance of a wait-listed ticket being confirmed, and also whether I should buy a Tatkal ticket instead. He told me that he was a booking clerk, not a lottery expert.
 
If I wanted the ticket I would have to figure out the odds myself. So I stepped out of the queue and rang up my personal statistician to ask him to rate my chances, and he wanted to know the total quota of reserved tickets (per class and per train) and the total quota of Tatkal tickets (per class and per train), but this information is highly classified and cannot be revealed by Indian Railways (it is so ‘top secret’ that even the top levels are in the dark about it).
 
Disappointed with my personal statistician, I rang up my personal astrologer for some help since he travels frequently by train and he has never been held back by an unconfirmed ticket. My astrologer’s advice was that I should contact a person called Vijay (obviously not his real name) who would help me out quickly. Not surprisingly, Vijay turned out to be a tout who charges a ‘fee’ to offer confirmed tickets even when they are theoretically not available.
 
Why cannot the Indian Railways authorities learn the tricks of the ticket trade from experts like Vijay? Vijay is certainly much more of an authority than the official authorities.  
 
What prevents Indian Railways from prominently displaying the information which can enable people to decide whether they should take a chance on a general ticket or buy a Tatkal ticket instead? This information – the number of trains on a route, the reserved quotas for general and Tatkal tickets, the current reservation and wait-list positions, the current cancellation figures, etc. –  is easily available to the railway authorities. As a matter of fact, Indian Railways can even ask some of the fancy IT companies to design software systems to crunch this data in real time and openly display ‘scientific tips’ on which train and which class to opt for at any point of time. Such systems can help you to get tickets without relying on the touts. 
 
And no one should worry about what will then happen to Vijay. The IT companies will need Vijay’s expertise to design ticketing systems which are Vijay-proof. You need a tout to checkmate a tout.
 
One affected Indian Bakra/I in the service of the people of India.

The Mystery of the Tatkal Train Ticket

Here is a little mystery about the Tatkal train ticket which I have been unable to figure out.

You can ask your friend to book your Tatkal train ticket online for you, and he can do it.

You can ask your travel agent to book it for you, and he can do it.

But no one, not even an Indian Railways divisional manager, can book your Tatkal ticket on your behalf at a railway booking counter, unless you too are physically present at the counter. Even if you are a senior citizen, you must be physically manifest in front of the booking window.

Why? Why are online bookings and travel agent bookings allowed ‘in absentia’ while booking counter bookings must be made ‘in presentia’?

What is the logic behind this? If there is some method (rather than madness), I do not get it. I may be stupid.

But my friends do not see the point either. Are we all stupid?

Or, wait, our only stupidity may be that we are assuming that the Indian Railways bureaucrat who made this silly rule is himself not silly.

Yes, that’s it. The bureaucrat who made this silly little rule is himself silly. Mystery solved.

Now, next step, we will have to locate some senior bureaucrat who will over-rule the junior bureaucrat who framed this silly little rule. By the time this happens the train will leave the platform, without our physical presence on it.

One affected Indian Bakra/I in the service of the people of India.

Tatkal Ticket Rule Discriminates Against Ladies & Senior Citizens

Strange, but true. Ladies and senior citizens are eligible for concessions for normal train tickets, but such concessions are withdrawn for Tatkal tickets.

Why should the Tatkal ticket rules discriminate in this way against ladies and senior citizens? The Tatkal ticket is, after all, bought only in an emergency. So, could the reason behind this rule be that ladies and senior citizens cannot possibly experience an emergency and that they will never need to book a ticket at the last minute?

No one will dispute that ladies and senior citizens deserve additional consideration, but they need this all the more in an emergency.

Frankly, this is one rule that non-senior ‘gentlemen’ citizens should agitate against, of course only if they genuinely respect ladies and elders.

What this stupid rule amounts to is this: in normal situations give due consideration and respect to ladies and senior citizens, but when they have an emergency let them fend for themselves. Unfair statement? But true, is it not?

One affected Indian Bakra/i in the service of the people of India.
 
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