Sunday, December 14, 2008

IRCTC Innovates.. But Fails to Manage

Indian Railways, largest organization in the world affects millions of Indians who travel across the country in trains.
This organization is doing a lot of innovation these days and commuters like me are very happy with a particular feature introduced by them: Internet Ticket Booking.

I still remember the way we used to send a person to Manmad to book tickets for us to go to different places. Online ticket booking service enabled people to book tickets from their home/offices sitting comfortably without any fuss.
Online ticketing also allows you to select your preference of berth which is tremendously helpful to old people as it is difficult for them to climb to upper/middle berth.

One more innovation done by Indian Railways is addition of one berth along with two side berths which they always had.
This helped people in many ways:
- more people can be accommodated in trains now so less waiting time
- RAC people get a berth to sleep and
- generates more revenue for India Railways
But sadly, Indian Railways failed to integrate this change with Online Ticketing, introducing LOTS of problems to commuters.

Last week while traveling from Manmad to Secuderabad, I booked upper berth ticket for myself and happily went to Manmad to board a train.
After boarding the train, I realized that they have replaced old train by a new train on this path and this train has three side berths instead of two. But this didn't reflect on my ticket and hence my UPPER BERTH now became LOWER SIDE BERTH. :(
While I could adjust with this change in berth, there were lot of people who were not comfortable with this mis-management.

Lot of the people specially booked "tatkal" ticket to get a lower berth which was then changed to middle/upper berth.
Tall people booked upper berth which was then changed to side lower making it utmost uncomfortable as side berths are shorter.

Even TTE wasn't ready to talk to people about this mess and adjust seat numbers accordingly.
Lot of people fought with TTE, fought within themselves but all in vain.

Finally, people had to adjust but cursed Indian Railways a lot while doing so.
Good intention/innovation went to the toss just because of the ignorance shown by management.

I hope they correct the situation as soon as possible for trains like these and make sure that this doesn't happen next time they replace new train on any path

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