SMS alerts, free WiFi and more: Suresh Prabhu presents tech friendly Rail Budget 2015

Indian Railways Minister Suresh Prabhu today presented a slew of measures that introduced mobile friendly facilities for passengers. Chief among these is a proposal to offer SMS alert services to inform passengers of delay and departure timings for trains.

Such a facility will be particularly useful for citizens in North India when fog season means inevitable delays and cancellations. Nearly all important stations in North India such as Delhi, Lucknow, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Jodhpur, Jaipur, etc end up facing train delays and cancellations due to fog, and in such a scenario a prior SMS alert system will help ensure that most don’t end up at the station only to find out that their train has been cancelled.

It remains to be seen how those who are not booking online and thus not giving their mobile number when reserving a ticket will get such alerts.

Another major announcement by Prabhu was that the government is developing a mobile application to address complaints of people with regard to railways. Such an application sounds like a great idea, given that the railways in India are woefully lacking in passenger amenities. It would have been more helpful if the Minister given details on how the app will help in dealing with the complaints.

The Minister also announced that charging facilities for mobile phones would be extended in all trains and stations. He added that the number of mobile phone charging points would be increased in general coaches as well. This will come as great news to most passengers, especially those who find themselves frequently commuting to different cities for work, since most users these days are dependent on their mobiles for work too.

In order to make ticketing more passenger friendly the Budget has also proposed “operation five minutes” for issuing unreserved tickets, hot buttons, coin vending machines, concessional e-tickets for differently abled travelers, for booking tickets a multi-lingual e-portal will be developed.

Crediting of refunds through banks and unreserved tickets on Smart phones will be available. Proliferation of automatic ticket vending machines with smart cards and currency options, integrated ticketing system on the lines of rail-cum-road tickets, Defence Travel System developed for elimination of Warrants have also been proposed in the Budget.

Another good-Internet linked initiative that was announced is that food can be ordered from the IRCTC website at the time of booking. The Minister said that, “E-catering has been introduced on some trains on experimental basis, depending on the response, it will be extended.”

He also announced that the government plans to create a a multilingual e-ticketing system which will be encouraging for those might not be comfortable in English.

With regard to WiFi, facilities will be provided at 400 stations including Category B stations. Recently the Delhi railway station got WiFi.

In Delhi, the WiFi is free of cost for an initial period of 30 minutes after which users are required to register for the same using their mobile phones. Beyond 30 minutes, users have to purchase scratch cards costing Rs 25 for 30 minutes and Rs 35 for an hour and valid for 24 hours. Users can buy them at Wi-Fi helpdesks on the concourse at the Paharganj and Ajmeri Gate sides of the railway station.

The Minister also proposed the development of an integrated customer portal for passengers to have ease of information and ticketing. The minister has also made a move towards encouraging paperless ticketing.

The initiatives, some of which promise mobile facility and as well as easier services via the Internet are much needed. They are also in-line with the Prime Minister’s recent remark at an e-governance conference where he said that, “While we look at e-Governance, let us think about ‘mobile first’ and thus give importance to m-Governance (mobile governance). I urge you to explore ways to provide as many services as possible through mobiles. Let us bring the world into our mobile phones!”

As we had noted earlier,  India is all set to become the second largest smartphone market in the world, and we are currently second largest country in terms of numbers of mobile users (this includes feature and smartphones) in the world, thus e-governance cannot afford to overlook mobile first.  While facilities like Banking, Bill Pay, LPG cylinder payments, tax payments, and even checking passport status is available to smartphone users, those who can’t afford such devices should not be left out of the mobile governance revolution.

Hopefully the Railways will ensure that the regular users, the one who can’t afford smartphones but have a mobile are not left behind as it offers more mobile-based services.