A Rewind and a Fast Forward of my memory lane

When I was studying in the School in late 80's , I remember travelling by Train was a big task and it involved lot of process. I remember , in the house my parents used to plan well ahead of their travel , and we used to cycle out five to six kilometers one way , to go to the railway station to do the booking. There will be a long queue and I used to wait for my turn patiently. Since those days , it was a manual system , the reservation clerk will make so many entries in a register and then if you are going to book a return ticket , they will just take your request and you need to again come back to the Railway Station , to check confirmation and to collect your return tickets. (They used to send a telegram to the place of orgination to confirm availability ). Similarly when some of our guests plan to visit us , we used to go to the station and then wait there for a long time for the train to arrive.

I am just looking at the present scenario. What a tremendous growth ?!!!. Though it has taken 25 years for this sort of growth (almost a quarter century) , I really commend and congratulate Indian Railways for their visionary approach. Being worlds largest Employer and being a Public Sector Enterprise , Railways has been one of the Role Models for other public sector enterprises to follow. Railways has contributed both directly and indirectly to the country's growth . Direct interms of revenue, bridging the rural- urban divide , commerce etc. But none of us would have thought how much precious man hours or the human capital railways would have saved by automizing most of their processes. Imagine the earlier days , where one has to spend about atleast 30 mts one way (as the stations are always away from the main city at those times) to reach the station and then spend about 30 mts in a queue and take another 30 mts to return to house. On an average one has to spend about 180mts just to do a reservation. I have not considered the planning time one has to go through. What is the situation now? Just a click away. You can do your booking through net , through SMS etc. It just takes less than 5mts if you book your tickets through net. You can print an e-ticket or if you want the hard copy it is couriered to your doorstep. Delivery at doorstep is a customer delight and Railways has acheived that.

Not only in automation. Railways has improved on the infrastructure very well and they have literally modernized their stations , catering etc. Though , there are complains here and there, over all Railways has really understood the customer needs and provides excellent customer satisfaction levels.

Though there is always scope for Improvement especially on the Passenger Safety and Intrain Hygiene , I salute Railways on their acheivement and I am really proud when I hear CEO of GE praising our Honourable Union Minister for Railways for his leadership quality. Its really a proud moment for we Indians and we should thank Railways and their entire employees for making India Proud.