Member Initiated Subject - Transforming Indian Railways

Dear Friends,

Thanks for your continued commitment to our circle and the timely inputs. Yesterday, we have submitted the whitepaper on Curbing Inflation and Price Rise to the PMO and Finance Minister.

Ms. Shikha Jain, a member of our circle had initiated the subject of Transforming Indian Railways some time back, asking us to come up with inputs on how productivity can be improved and corruption reduced in Indian Railways.

Based on your inputs to her post, these are Issues, Root Causes and Solutions we have summarized so far. If you have any additional inputs, kindly submit them by End of Day tomorrow i.e. July 8th.

We will then compile a similar whitepaper on the subject and submit to Railway Minister and his team.

Once again, while we are working on detailed discussions on priorities identified, from time to time we will pick areas suggested by you and conduct the detailed review on them followed by submission to the Government. So, keep coming with ideas of good governance/development for the nation and share with the circle.

Thanks for your participation!

Rajendra Pratap Gupta
Bharatiya Janata Party

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Transformation of Indian Railways (Issues, Root Causes, Solutions)

Issues Identified
1 Ticket fares are increased frequently
2 Indian railways is not a high speed network
3 Difficult to get tickets even in tatkal
4 Hygiene issues on the stations and inside the train
5 Food served in the trains is sub-standard
6 Most of the trains are usually off schedule
7 T.T.E collect money from people and then allocate berths to them
8 People are packed into general compartment beyond its capacity
9 A tout can easily get you tickets by taking some extra money
10 Trains are usually off-schedule
11 Most business done with Indian Railways involves bribery and corruption

Root Causes Identified
1. A lot of money gets circulated in corruption
2. Electricity and fuel has got costlier
3 A large number of people travel without ticket
4 Railways has become a giant organization which is difficult to control
5 They need to cater to a huge population base
6 Increase in cost of projects due to delays
7 Un-accountability of officers
8 Passengers are not educated to maintain cleanliness in trains and on platforms
9 Lack of proactiveness among the railways department
10 Every small change needs a lot of approvals to get implemented
11 Most of the procurement and external interaction is in person/manual with no systems

Solutions Identified
1 Transform railways into a PPP model
2 FDI in railways should be allowed
3 Information technologies can be used for live updating of reservation charts
4 Vigilance has to be improved on all TTE's
5 A check need to be put on all the free passes that are issued
6 Increase in the average speed of trains so that the running time decreases and more trains can be run
7 Reduction in concessions given to some special categories
8 Special measures should be taken to maintain cleanliness in the pantry var
9 Every bogie should have a cap on the number of passengers allowed in
10 Touts should be caught and dealt severely with
11 Build better railway stations and build retail spaces around them
12. Performance of the IRCTC website should be significantly improved
13 Indian railways could be used for advertising
14 The logistics arm of the railways needs to be professionally managed
15 Public address system and Wi-fi needs to be installed
16 Electronic Tendering, Procurement and elimination of human interface in all supplier/customer transactions must be implemented. more