The Railways and the sceptical me

Well I was just wondering why was I so much sceptical about the turn around story of Indian Railways probably the main reason being the public face of all this is a politician who doesnt find favours with the educated class. ( Oh yes I might not deserve but I still count myself as one) Had the person being a bureucrat or academician probably I would have been much more convinced.

Well few days back I got a chance to interact with Dr Goel a very senior figure with Railways and man behind E ticket / Tatkal , Ex MD IRCTC etc. I think the main benefit of being able to study at places like IIMs is you get a chance to meet people whom you would otherwise only meet from a distance of few meters.

There have been few interesting learnings:
Primary Ones:

• Railways is a pretty good business man (Humanizing railways)


• They are run by people who are fundamentally honest and talented


• The turn around story is for real.
  

Secondry Ones ( Tit bits of info):

• Palace on wheels is booked for Next 3 years


• During kargil war app 600 trains were diverted to western border in 48 hours


• Railways offer app 160 types of concessions


• The source of money is mainly freight business


• Strangely they don't have any monopoly in any business


• There variable cost in most cases is very less


• The growth in transportation is app 1.4 times that of GDP


• They are investing app 50K crore in developing a dedicated freight corridor


• They have been substantially able to control leakages because of computraization


• They actually have a well defined HR Policy for 1+ Million employee.
  

The railways turn around story:
Its for real
Some of the reasons behind it.

• The groundwork was prepared by previous minister


• Heavy investment in infra development was done previous to Mr Lalu


• They kind of legalized over loading. ( App 8% )


• 30% of seats were moved to tatkal


• They moved to aggressive dynamic pricing


• GDP grew and so did transportation


• They aggresively took lot of B to B initiative

Futuristic:

• They are trying to come up with a portal where the tickets will actually be auctioned.

These were just few of the tit bits, if you are interested in more just send me a mail will share with you the slides.

Tanay Anand
IIM Lucknow
Noida Campus

The exams and some honest confessions

No its not written by me, just read it from somewhere.But undoubetdly it so correctly conveys the meaning.

मैं कभी बतलाता नहीं... पर Tri-semester से डरता हूँ मैं माँ ...
यूं तो मैं दिखलाता नहीं ... grades की परवाह करता हूँ मैं माँ ..
तुझे सब है पता ....है न माँ
किताबों में ...यूं न छोडो मुझे.. chapters के नाम भी न बतला पाऊँ माँ
वह भी तो ...इतने सारे हैं.... याद भी अब तो आ न पाएं माँ ...
क्या इतना गधा हूँ मैं माँ .. क्या इतना गधा हूँ मैं माँ ..
जब भी कभी ..invigilator मुझे .. जो गौर से ..आँखों से घूरता है माँ ... मेरी नज़र ..ढूंढे qstn paper...सोचूं यही .. कोई सवाल तो बन जायेगा.....