Talk:Indian Railways/Archive 2

Current Problems
Dear Sir(s), I appreciate your zeal to maintain the Indian Rail article. However, this article seems more like an official statement from Indian Rail, than a Neutral point of view. Indian Rail is passing through a very difficult phase and needs around Rs 200,000 crores for moderanisation, for which there appears to be no source of funding.

Govt is not ready to provide the budgetary support, there is only one way that is Private Participation. Further Airlines have hit hard towards upper class passengers of the railways, but being a monoply, there is lot of announcements about passenger amenities by the Railways, but ground reality is much different. If we visit Delhi Metro, then we find trains and stations as world class. All trains are air-conditioned. If Delhi Metro can do it, then why not Indian Rail - it is just an issue of investment and the attitue.

I would also request you to find the diffence between Government Accounts and Commercial accounts and then you will realise the reality of the claims of the Railways.

Further, Pay commission in 1986 & 1996 had hit badly the bottom-lines of the Railways and all other Central and State Government Departments of India. 6th Pay-commission has already been setup and will give report by 2008, effective from Jan 01, 2006, hence Indian Rail in its present avtar will definately be in red in the year 2008-2009. With 1.6 million employees, the Government can do little but to accept the reports of the pay commission.

The threat of airlines on upper class passengers of the railways, especially Rajdhani & Shatabadi is serious. This has become only possible because Indian Aviation sector has stiff competition, wheras Railways passenger services are a Government monopoly. Competition in India has always improved the things for better for the customers, be it telecommunications or aviation, if it will be there in Railways, things are bound to improve for the consumers. Regards (Sunrise10 05:19, 19 March 2007 (UTC))
 * We understand your zeal to maintain the neutral point of view, but you must attribute all your claims and statements to credible sites such as media organisations. Regards, =Nichalp   «Talk»=  05:37, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Added a link to trainalerts.com, hope thats fine

Jeetu

it was mentioned in the article that "Sanitation in trains and stations throughout the system is getting more attention with the introduction of eco-friendly, discharge-free green toilets developed by IIT Kanpur", do we really need IITians to develope toilets?, can we just mimic the toilets and and cleanliness provided by trains in UK / london, or in US / newyork. Or how about mimicing toilets in airlines, in airlines we dont dump the human extract outside, why cant we copy that, why asking IITinas to do this research ;-)

vijay 217.171.129.68 (talk) 14:54, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

@ vijay: Well, the way the west does their defecation and the way Indians do their defecation is pretty different ainnit? In the west, Toilet paper is enought o clean up but try telling that to an indian!!!

Of course we cant use the type of toilets they use in UK and US. And as for IITians doing the research, whats wrong with that? Bilbo elffriend | Talk 12:07, 16 October 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bilbo elffriend (talk • contribs)

"which is just one billion short of the entire world population."
I removed this, I don't think it is adding any valuable concrete information, and the comparison is pointless and makes no sense. --Djihed 18:23, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

IR Zones
I have merged the two tables in the zones section, here: User:Binand/Zones of Indian Railways. Is it OK to merge this edit into the article?

Secondly, Salem division does not exist. Adding Salem under SR is POV. IR doesn't list the division here:http://www.indianrail.gov.in/ir_zones.pdf and the matter is with the Supreme Court now (http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/002200707260315.htm). Can we remove it from the list of divisions of SR?

Binand 14:51, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

The Chairman Railway Board is changed
Bikupa2002 18:11, 30 August 2007 (UTC)According to Indian Railways Official Webpage http://www.indianrailways.gov.in/ the Railway Board members are as under: Chairman : Railway Board - J. P. Batra Member  : Electrical    - S. C. Gupta : Engineering  - R. R. Jaruhar : Mechanical   - R. K. Rao : Staff        - K. C. Jana : Traffic      - S. B. Ghosh Dastidar Finance Commissionar    - R. Sivadasan

This may be included

Indian Railways revenue is mere 3.5 billion USD?
Somebody gave a complete wrong figure. Indias largest employer will earn a lot lot more than 3.5 billion. The figure 3.5 B USD is only for two months. For entire 2007-08, revenues should cross 40 billion USD. Even IT Majors have greater than 3.5bn revenues. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.243.161.52 (talk) 18:33, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I think you may be right if you consider the revenues. Its net profit though is about 4 billion USD.  =Nichalp   «Talk»=  18:45, 9 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Indian Railway's earnings are around US$ 15 billion (Truevalue (talk) 07:46, 11 October 2008 (UTC))

Freight charges ON IR
can somebody correct the figures: talking of freight per ton instead of per ton-km is meaningless.

Rail budget and finances
The article is like a propaganda of a particular Ministry. As there is no neutral assessment of Indian Railway's accounts, the actual profit can not be worked out till there is Independent Audit of Railway's accounts. Further, as mentioned in these discussion pages the 6th pay commission recommendations are going to hit Indian Railway's bottom-lines very badly, rough estimates are in excess of Rs 6,400 crores for this year alone. Whereas there are talks of Indian Railway's supluses, the fact is that Indian Rail plan to expect Rs 7874 crores as budgetary support from Govt of India. The comparison with Canda Railways is also misleading as there are many companies in Canada which operate Railways, whereas Indian Railways is monoply. Further, the Canadian Railways are commecial companies having its accounts assessed by independent auditors and have to pay taxes on their earnings, whereas Indian Railways in part of Government of India. Its accounts are not audited by independent auditors and it does not have to pay any tax on its earnings. The word bankruptcy is also misleading as Railways deposits its earnings to Consolidated fund of India & draws money for expenditure from consolidated fund of India, hence bankruptcy of Indian Railways will mean bankruptcy of Government of India! (Truevalue (talk) 07:42, 11 October 2008 (UTC))
 * I think I fixed that for you. (Took the tag out.) --Regents Park (bail out your boat) 17:16, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Random rantings
This is only shown in budget that there is no increase in fares for the past three to four years to drum the success of the government. But the fact is they are collecting much higher amount than the previous railway ministers who enhanced the fares in normal fashion.This government is collecting huge amounts through back door. This is done by putting more than fifty percent of the reserved accommodation under tatkal( reservation given one or two days earlier to the journey) with enhanced fee of Rs75/ 150 per ticket for second sleeper and much higher for higher classes. Earlier tatkal used to be only 72 seats in about 500 seats, which means, that is less than 15% of total seats. Tatkal charges used to be nominal earlier, now they are collecting at Rs150 for ten months in an year for second sleeper and at Rs 75 for two months. This makes almost impossible to get accommodation at normal fares as there are only 50% seats available. This is only a tip of the iceberg to show how this ministry is squeezing money from public in back door method. Now the tatkal has lost its meaning as seats under this facility can booked in one week in advance at a premium price. Safety in trains has touched the lowest ebb. With so much of technology around, signaling and technical aspects have not shown any improvement. Fire preventive measure are given a go by. Recently many fire accidents have taken place. The worst thing that has happened recently in this great railway is they are trying to squeeze more passengers in to a reserved compartments by putting another berth at the side windows which are single seats. Earlier there used to be 72 births, now they have made it 80 per compartment. Because of this no body would know now his birth place either it is lower, middle, upper and so on. When we reserve we are told that we are given lower berth ( for senior citizens), but to our dismay we see that the berth allotted could be even upper( at the age of 70 plus). We are uncertain about accommodation even after booking earlier(1 or 2 months). This has happened to many passengers without notice. There is no body to answer you as the ticket collector would not listen to your pleas. They want to make a reserved compartment equivalent to an unreserved by putting more passengers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gskumar1948 (talk • contribs) 11:45, 20 October 2008 (UTC)