Addressing core problem

With Indian railways leaving no stone unturned to facilitate its customer in booking railway ticket the million dollar question remains unanswered. Are there sufficient allocations available to book.

There were days when railway reservation was all manual and every booking counter was having a specific quota to book, but with the advent of computerized booking the quota got abolished, booking process became more transparent and making reservation became few clicks job thanks to online reservation facility. The next revolution in reservation is sought to be happening from cell phone, mobile vans and retail outlets which will be authorized to Book the railway ticket.

Latest buzz in the same league is The “Mushkil Aassan” mobile van which has been introduced with the idea of taking the issuance of computerized tickets both reserved and un-reserved to the grass roots. It will work from 10.30 am to 4.30 pm from Monday to Saturday at different locations every day, while Sunday will be utilized for its maintenance. The cost of the ticket will be the same as that of tickets purchased from the usual Passenger Reservation System counters.

All steps whether online reservation, retail ticket selling, mobile reservation or “Mushkil Aassan” are taken to give the customer an ease for getting reservation but the core Problem remains unattended that “Are there enough seats available for booking ?” There is always a low availability of accommodation (seat reservation) to tackle this there are selected numbers of trains available to ferry between any of the prominent cities causing a long waiting for reservation throughout the year.

The basic observation I had is all those cities who have air connectivity between them are important cities in some or other context (Airlines companies always operate on profitable route) and getting railway reservation between such cities is always a luck affair, One has to content himself with Waiting list or Reservation against cancellation tickets provided he is lucky enough to get even those confirmations.

The Core problem of railway passenger is to get confirm reservation and not in applying for reservation, Until and unless we work for solving the core problem the facilitation is a mere showoff.

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