“Corruption in Railways in India”

Corruption in Railways in India

Executive Summary
Indian Railways like many other sectors in India is affected by Corruption. The effect gets compounded because of the number of people that use Indian Railways. The effect of Corruption is felt through bad product/service as well as bribes that are required to sometimes travel or do business with Railways. The 45,000+ strong “Make Railways Better” online community has come together to collectively identify the key issues, the root causes and solutions for Corruption in Railways in India. The community expects that the Government will place the due importance on this submission and take actions that will reduce Corruption drastically in Indian Railways.

Issues Identified:
1. The nexus between agents and railways authorities
2. Corruption in awarding contracts for disposal of junk/scrap
3. Bribes are asked for leaking the bid price for food contracts
4. Huge corruption in goods transportation – you cannot transport goods/vehicles through railways without paying bribes
5. Corruption in supply of engineering spares/ material
6. Accounts Department does not release payment cheque without commission (bribe - generally a % of order amount)
7. Station Master takes HAFTA from all the venders and bends backwards for politicians and goons
8. No mechanism to check the parking contracts. Extra parking charges outside railway station
9. The pantry boys asks for the compulsory tips towards end of the journey
10.Agents charge up to 300% of the original price of a ticket to get you a confirmed ticket
11.Railway police taking instalments from beggars and allow them to beg on railway stations
12.Major bribes asked for in the Railway recruitment process

Root Causes Identified:
1. Big demand and supply gap
2. Too much authority to the railway employees
3. Employees are lower paid as compared to the private sector
4. Workload is quite heavy
5. No timelines set for completion of work
6. Government policies are tedious to understand
7. People want their work to be done first and quickly
8. Pathetic customer feedback and redressal mechanism
9. Process of awarding contracts is mainly manual
10. No monitoring of the staff by seniors
11. Agents have access to VIP quota tickets due to their link ups with officials
12. Railway recruitment process is not computerised
13. Everyone wants their share of the pie when they can make it
14. Service providers become demoralized by interference from politicians and resort to taking bribes
15. Employees feel unable to cope with the increased demands and expectations of consumers

Solutions Identified:
1. The authority given to the railway employees should be curtailed
2. Salaries of the railway employees should be bought at par with private sector
3. A turn-around-time should be set for every process
4. Railway policies should be simplified so that a common man could understand it
5. A proper complaint redressal mechanism should be set up
6. Daily working of the railways should be computerised
7. Manual interaction from the tendering process should be minimised
8. Managers should keep a keep a tight tab over the employees to churn out optimum performance
9. Railway employees should undergo performance reviews every year
10. Railway should be run professionally as a separate commercial corporation with latest HR procedures
11. Railway recruitment should be computerised
12. The goods transport department should be streamlined
13. Only authorised vendors should be allowed in the trains/on the stations
14. Controls of the top brass should be tightened so that sincerity and uniformity flows down the ladder
15. Bring transparency and device procedures in transactions so that one cannot indulge in corrupt means
16. VIP quota in trains should be abolished
17. Extra compartments should be added to trains on busy routes
18. IRCTC website should be updated with latest technology after regular intervals
19. Railway should be run professionally as a separate commercial corporation with latest HR procedures
20. Agents and touts should be banned
21. Officials caught taking bribes should be severely penalised.

Corruption in Railways – Some Citizen Posts and Comments
1. The biggest corruption in Railway is in purchases made through tenders. Buying anything for Tracks Coaches construction etc. has corruption. And the corruption is at the cost of Quality which is very harmful for general public. Corruption at the cost of quality means we do not get the required quality of tracks coaches services etc. – Chandra Kumar Agrawal

2. Corruption in awarding contracts for disposal of junk/scrap. Corruption in supply of engineering spares/ material. No mechanism to check the parking contracts. Extra parking charges outside railway station – Kathiresan Ramanathan

3. Nexus between IRCTC and Railway Senior Officials. Arbitrary decision on TDR by IRCTC – Rina Choudhary

4. A huge % of the fine collection goes directly to the well interconnected railway employees at stations without giving any receipt (asking a less amount than the actual fine). That should be stopped – Prashanta Sahu

5. Boys who serve pantry food in coaches charge extra than fixed rate. Even though it is compulsory to display rate card in every coach, to charge as per the will & wish, it is never displayed – Rajeev Joshi

6. The corruption in tendering can be diminished by starting the system of eprocurement where every bid is undisclosed and every money transaction is ethical. If at all the people have any suspicion towards the bidding process, the bidding software should be designed in such a way that only the name of the highest bidder is displayed and every tender should have a minimum amount – Siddharth Hebbar

7. Corruption is very rampant in all public entities. Perhaps one way out is to break the system into smaller accountable units. The other major point that needs to be attended to is transparency. If the passengers/public has better access to information, a lot of corruption will get rooted out. The third point is reducing discretion given to the officers. Most of the things should be governed by well publicised rules, so that public knows what can be expected, and can act if that does not happen. The fourth is transfer as many tasks as possible to technology, because technology cannot 'grant favours', it is impersonal and impartial – Tensing Rodrigues 8. Bribery at railway counter for booking Tatkal tickets by agents and non-cooperation to the common people is the biggest issue – Shivasankar Sultania

9. Unlicensed vending and beggary in Railway premises and running trains are obviously with the support of the railway checking staff. Otherwise, despite complaints from the bon-a-fide public present in stations and in running trains, why these persons continue to fleece the general public as well as the railways? - Rangarajan Govindrajan

10. Corruption in railway is not only through ticketing or canteens. it is in a very low level but actual corruption is on high level like contractor works for new infrastructures, alteration which is not mandatory and supply of materials – Rajesh Soni

11. Huge quantities of scrap material are lying by the side of rail lines everywhere in south India for years. Could be into millions of tonnes. And would fetch thousands of crores of rupees. This money could help like oxygen in the financially ailing Railways. But, the top Rail officials and politicians will calculate their own commissions first, then the shares in commissions and if the officer or Politician is not getting the satisfactory and enough share then he / she will not bother about the rotting scrap. looks like ,The corruption in scrap dealing must be huge, very huge – Sayyed Zainul

12. The main problem faced by the traveling public is the nexus between agents and railways authorities which results in agents charging up to 300% of the original price of a ticket to get one a confirmed ticket. This is compounded by the fact that you cannot get a Tatkal ticket even if you log in at the time Tatkal booking opens for a particular day – Amarjit Singh Chowdhary

13. Bribes in Railway recruitment - Doctors ask for bribes to clear medical report even if they don't find anything medically wrong in the candidates. Also, the medical attendants who create reports for X-Ray and other tests threatens to modify the report if bribe not paid. There is extreme corruption even internally in railways to get some work done. Other concerns - People who are responsible for cleaning in long route trains get the feedback form signed from customers at beginning itself after first cleaning and then don't come even if you threaten them to report to higher authorities. A request to railway - Please start a centralized online complaint/feedback centre where a passenger could provide feedback (positive or negative) and can register a complaint which should be taken seriously and acted upon – Amit Sonal

14. Railways’ is swarmed with mafia and goons. There is unholy nexus everywhere in the railways activities. Besides corruption pervading everywhere in the railway, the Railway is most polluting. See right from the track of Kanyakumari to Kashmir and in between the stations, are littered with plastics and other rubbishes, not to talk of human faeces all throughout. No sense of cleanliness - there will be one day show by the officials, thereafter fall in deep slumber – Vijay Kumar Nair