The topic would have said "Wait listed" but thank god, our ticket got updated to at least an RAC.
Well, Me and Pandey had to go home for CAT and we booked our tickets not too far before the date of journey, we got a wait listed ticket. However our history in Goa Express was good, with tickets getting confirmed, so we took a risk...in fact a big risk. Our tickets in both directions were WL.
And though Vishal had told us that when he had come to Goa after summer vacations, the particular train had some new kinds of coaches with 9 berths in each coupe. For those of you who haven't travelled in train recently thanks to the Spicejet and Deccan..well there used to be 8 seats in a coupe.
So on the D-Day we reached the train to find out that thankfully our status was RAC, i e we had a berth to sit on at least...
However We reached our seat( notice the plural in "we" and the singular in "seat" :|), and found that indeed our coach had 9 seats in each coupe...well that wasn't the shocker, the real shocker came when another guy came on the same seat and that was a revelation that RAC was now given to 3 people instead of the 2 people who shared a seat.Earlier the side lower berth was given for RAC, so two people could somehow manage, but ab to we got the lower berth for three people, aur middle berth open karne ke baad to there is not enough height to even sit. :(
Well luckily for us, en-route to Delhi, our berth got confirmed, so thankfully it was no problem. The journey was uneventful though most people seemed to know each other. 70% of the people who passed our seat stopped to talk to the people who shared our coupe. It was later that we came to know that all these people were going to some "Maha Sammelan", well that explained why we didn't get any confirmed tickets.
And surprisingly the train reached Delhi before time...so I had to wait for my parents to reach..and it was real cold on the platform..
CAT to lite tha..had done all my preparation in the train itself..woh dekhte hue to number theek hi aaye hai.
While coming back,our status moved up from WL to RAC just hours before the train had to
leave. And again the train was jam packed,most people going back from the "Sammelan". The third person who had n RAC ticket was an old lady from some village in Maharashtra who knew no Hindi or English, and me and Pandey did not know any Marathi From what we could make out, she did not know the concept of RAC, she believed that the seat was hers and that we were basically traveling ticket less. I was losing my temper trying to make her
understand that the seat wasn't just hers.
Sample this convo we were having
She:Blah blah...(grumbling in Marathi, what I assumed was telling us to move off "her" seat)
Me:This is our seat too.
She:Blah blah...(still grumbling some crap)
Me:( Using sign language too) 3...Hamare paas bhi ticket hai... RAC... confirmed nahi...
She:( now complaining to who ever would listen to her)
Me:Ab to nahi uthne waala main Goa tak...jao bhaad mein..
Pandey:(Finally entering the conversation, apne patient tarike se) Jaane de na yaar...
Finally one of the lady's relative who was sitting elsewhere came and told us to move. Unfortunately for him, I was real angry and he understood Hindi, and I blasted him left right and centre. I told him "Ab to TT ko bula...tabhi sone doonga tujhe aaj to..". Kafi der mein usse kisi Marathi ne RAC ka concept samajhaya, phir uski samajh mein aaya...
Till late night,the middle berth was empty, so I and Pandey tried sleeping there,with my legs reaching out to the middle berth in the front. Pandey also slept in some wierd position.
Even after Pune, the train didn't empty off...finally after Satara, those crowds got off..incl. our "nice" companion. Till that time, we had not had any dinner, so we brought some namkeen and soft-drinks. When we had nearly finished, some cops who were making rounds reached our coupe. They saw 2 guys having namkeen and lots of bottles (soft-drinks
and water bottles etc) lying about and stopped to check.
Also finally after 30 hrs of being on the train, the TT finally made an appearance. He saw our tickets (which had been printed when our ticket showed a WL of more than 50) and politely asked "Aap ki tickets confirm ho gayi thi??". Both me and Pandey are like "WTH, you should be telling us that".
But now we come to why I wrote this post. Well,Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav, the railway minister presented the rail budget a few days back. And ever since he has become the Railway minister,he has not increased the ticket fares. And yet he continues to show a profit for the Railways. A few observations that I made during the journeys that we have made on the Delhi-Goa route in the last 3-4 years of how the Railways is still making a profit.
* Number of bogies in trains increased.
* Number of seats increased from 72 to 81. The 9 extra seats in each bogie, for the entire train, that on an average has 18 bogies (A/C and non A/C combined). If we consider even the 13 non A/C coaches, assuming people travelling the full distance, which costs around Rs 500, the money Lalu can earn on a single journey of Goa Express is more than 50K. Now calculate this amount for the thousands of trains running each year.Isse kehte hai PROFIT.
* The number of Tatkal tickets, which cost about Rs. 150 more than the normal ticket have been increased. Railways have also started giving out WL for Tatkal,which are non-refundable, so even if the ticket doesn't get confirmed you can't get your money back. Also only a very small percentage of people who buy tickets under Tatkal cancel their tickets,so most of the WL tatkal tickets end up raking in profit.
* No of bogies in Goods train increased. Therefore,more bogies=more goods being carried=more profit.
* And on Delhi Railway station, I saw a Rajdhani Express standing. The train had full length Airtel ad's painted on the train. I cannot even imagine how much Airtel would be paying for these ad's.
* Lalu ki ek aur ambitious plan tha...to let the filthy rich people have a train named after them for some price. However the plan couldn't materialize, warna we might be travelling in Birla Express or Ambani Mail ;)
These were just a part of the strategies he has employed to change the fortunes of the Railways...and he has been successful, and he has been called to quite a few B-schools, in India and abroad to tell the success story. In-fact..however corrupt he might be, you just have to respect the guy for the implementation his brilliant ideas.
However..getting up the side upper seat is a near impossible task...bas koi Vishal jaisa hi ghus paayega..someone small and definitely a person who can perform aerobatics.I dare the Railway minister to get into that seat. :P
Well, Me and Pandey had to go home for CAT and we booked our tickets not too far before the date of journey, we got a wait listed ticket. However our history in Goa Express was good, with tickets getting confirmed, so we took a risk...in fact a big risk. Our tickets in both directions were WL.
And though Vishal had told us that when he had come to Goa after summer vacations, the particular train had some new kinds of coaches with 9 berths in each coupe. For those of you who haven't travelled in train recently thanks to the Spicejet and Deccan..well there used to be 8 seats in a coupe.
So on the D-Day we reached the train to find out that thankfully our status was RAC, i e we had a berth to sit on at least...
However We reached our seat( notice the plural in "we" and the singular in "seat" :|), and found that indeed our coach had 9 seats in each coupe...well that wasn't the shocker, the real shocker came when another guy came on the same seat and that was a revelation that RAC was now given to 3 people instead of the 2 people who shared a seat.Earlier the side lower berth was given for RAC, so two people could somehow manage, but ab to we got the lower berth for three people, aur middle berth open karne ke baad to there is not enough height to even sit. :(
Well luckily for us, en-route to Delhi, our berth got confirmed, so thankfully it was no problem. The journey was uneventful though most people seemed to know each other. 70% of the people who passed our seat stopped to talk to the people who shared our coupe. It was later that we came to know that all these people were going to some "Maha Sammelan", well that explained why we didn't get any confirmed tickets.
And surprisingly the train reached Delhi before time...so I had to wait for my parents to reach..and it was real cold on the platform..
CAT to lite tha..had done all my preparation in the train itself..woh dekhte hue to number theek hi aaye hai.
While coming back,our status moved up from WL to RAC just hours before the train had to
leave. And again the train was jam packed,most people going back from the "Sammelan". The third person who had n RAC ticket was an old lady from some village in Maharashtra who knew no Hindi or English, and me and Pandey did not know any Marathi From what we could make out, she did not know the concept of RAC, she believed that the seat was hers and that we were basically traveling ticket less. I was losing my temper trying to make her
understand that the seat wasn't just hers.
Sample this convo we were having
She:Blah blah...(grumbling in Marathi, what I assumed was telling us to move off "her" seat)
Me:This is our seat too.
She:Blah blah...(still grumbling some crap)
Me:( Using sign language too) 3...Hamare paas bhi ticket hai... RAC... confirmed nahi...
She:( now complaining to who ever would listen to her)
Me:Ab to nahi uthne waala main Goa tak...jao bhaad mein..
Pandey:(Finally entering the conversation, apne patient tarike se) Jaane de na yaar...
Finally one of the lady's relative who was sitting elsewhere came and told us to move. Unfortunately for him, I was real angry and he understood Hindi, and I blasted him left right and centre. I told him "Ab to TT ko bula...tabhi sone doonga tujhe aaj to..". Kafi der mein usse kisi Marathi ne RAC ka concept samajhaya, phir uski samajh mein aaya...
Till late night,the middle berth was empty, so I and Pandey tried sleeping there,with my legs reaching out to the middle berth in the front. Pandey also slept in some wierd position.
Even after Pune, the train didn't empty off...finally after Satara, those crowds got off..incl. our "nice" companion. Till that time, we had not had any dinner, so we brought some namkeen and soft-drinks. When we had nearly finished, some cops who were making rounds reached our coupe. They saw 2 guys having namkeen and lots of bottles (soft-drinks
and water bottles etc) lying about and stopped to check.
Also finally after 30 hrs of being on the train, the TT finally made an appearance. He saw our tickets (which had been printed when our ticket showed a WL of more than 50) and politely asked "Aap ki tickets confirm ho gayi thi??". Both me and Pandey are like "WTH, you should be telling us that".
But now we come to why I wrote this post. Well,Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav, the railway minister presented the rail budget a few days back. And ever since he has become the Railway minister,he has not increased the ticket fares. And yet he continues to show a profit for the Railways. A few observations that I made during the journeys that we have made on the Delhi-Goa route in the last 3-4 years of how the Railways is still making a profit.
* Number of bogies in trains increased.
* Number of seats increased from 72 to 81. The 9 extra seats in each bogie, for the entire train, that on an average has 18 bogies (A/C and non A/C combined). If we consider even the 13 non A/C coaches, assuming people travelling the full distance, which costs around Rs 500, the money Lalu can earn on a single journey of Goa Express is more than 50K. Now calculate this amount for the thousands of trains running each year.Isse kehte hai PROFIT.
* The number of Tatkal tickets, which cost about Rs. 150 more than the normal ticket have been increased. Railways have also started giving out WL for Tatkal,which are non-refundable, so even if the ticket doesn't get confirmed you can't get your money back. Also only a very small percentage of people who buy tickets under Tatkal cancel their tickets,so most of the WL tatkal tickets end up raking in profit.
* No of bogies in Goods train increased. Therefore,more bogies=more goods being carried=more profit.
* And on Delhi Railway station, I saw a Rajdhani Express standing. The train had full length Airtel ad's painted on the train. I cannot even imagine how much Airtel would be paying for these ad's.
* Lalu ki ek aur ambitious plan tha...to let the filthy rich people have a train named after them for some price. However the plan couldn't materialize, warna we might be travelling in Birla Express or Ambani Mail ;)
These were just a part of the strategies he has employed to change the fortunes of the Railways...and he has been successful, and he has been called to quite a few B-schools, in India and abroad to tell the success story. In-fact..however corrupt he might be, you just have to respect the guy for the implementation his brilliant ideas.
However..getting up the side upper seat is a near impossible task...bas koi Vishal jaisa hi ghus paayega..someone small and definitely a person who can perform aerobatics.I dare the Railway minister to get into that seat. :P
4 comments:
Awesome post Boxy!
But isn't it that a waitlisted Tatkal ticket gets refunded if not confirmed? I was unable to cancel a waitlisted Tatkal e-ticket in September, but after a few days, the amount for the ticket got automatically refunded to my account.
Also, the concept of introducing a "Side Middle" is particularly annoying one. First of all, as you said it makes the side berths (all SL, SM and SU) so highly congested, but the person allotted side middle actually sits on the other side of the coupe (for those who dont know). So while all of us are paying the same fare, one one berth are 4 people sitting while on another are 3 people sitting!! What about consumer rights and right to equality!!
Thanks Abhaiii
e-ticket shayad automatically refund ho jaati ho...but for the nomral ticket, i was told by the TT during a trip that there is no refund for tatkal tickets...
Srsly including the 3rd seat in the side is painful..your point is actually valid..the 3rd person has to actually sit as a fourth passenger..and thats actually unconfortable...
Passenger conforts ki to maar li hai...khana etc sab ka standard down ho gaya hai
Yeah, well...the RAILWAY Minister's flying!!
koi nahi..election aa rahe hai..agar UPA jeet nahi paayi...to Lalu will be back on the Garib Rath ;)
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