Indian railway booking: An example of how middlemen are drawn into a bad system

IRCTC homepage, image courtesy: irctcloginpage.in

I dread today's project of booking a tatkal (quota that opens 1 day prior to journey date) railway ticket. I must go through the only site available, www.irctc.co.in.

Firstly, registering oneself on IRCTC, is fairly easy, as long as you have an Indian cell phone, to which an activation code will be sent. If you are a foreign tourist (or even an NRI) looking to make reservations, you are going to start hating India.

 Once you are in, the flow is linear, up until the reservation confirmation screen. You begin with a search for relevant trains, and then availability. Then, you pick the train and type out the traveler names on yet another page. You then choose a payment option. Only Indian credit/debit cards are accepted. A major problem with this page is that once you have chosen a payment option, you have no way of going back to select another for any reason. You are required to start over. And the serial flow itself works this way, no chance of going back at any point. And of course, at each stage, you can be forced to start over ("Service Unavailable"). This doesn't always happen, but will happen several times to you during tatkal booking when the traffic is very high. A very frustrating user experience that the global IT superpower that is India seems unable to make better in any way.

Because this process is so frustrating even for a fairly sophisticated computer user, middlemen inevitably crop up. And crop up they have in huge numbers, making an entire industry out of booking electronic tickets. To qualify 'sophisticated computer user' further, I've found that you have better chance of making a reservation (especially tatkal) if you have more than one browser open and attempting log in using separate IRCTC accounts (mine and another family member's usually). My average turn around time for a solitary tatkal ticket is about 1 hour.

Cases of rogue IRCTC agents (and sometimes Railway employees) abusing the site and the system have already come and gone. Either way, the system being what it is, is definitely prone to middlemen thriving and attempting to game the system.

Just making the site user friendly (can't the government hire a user experience firm?) and decently fail-safe at high traffic times, will take a lot of the need for middlemen out of the picture. It is not the wait time that frustrates most, although that is not an insurmountable problem either. Each time I go through a tatkal booking process, I end up thinking I should start getting these done through an agent. I'm sure others think that way too..

Until a few months ago (or has it been over a year?), sites such as makemytrip.com and cleartrip.com used to allow railways bookings (even tatkal) through their site. Now, these sites are practically useless for railway bookings. The entire IRCTC registration process is required, and a Cleartrip account, for example, will only link your account to the IRCTC account. The Railways has now made IRCTC the only stop for tatkal tickets, and the IRCTC site is fairly stable during non-tatkal (peak) hours. So, why would anyone go to the trouble of doing the entire linking process within Cleartrip? This is a nice example of how IRCTC could not build a fool-proof booking platform that would allow the likes of Cleartrip to take advantage of. IRCTC, instead, has chosen to be the monopoly booking site, all driven by an anti-fraud team and not a user experience team.

Another major middleman-creator is the lack of regional language interfaces on the IRCTC site. Does the government expect all ticket bookers to know English? Can a good Tamil-language or Hindi-language interface not be built? 

It is good that there are many private service centres (like STD booths) that allow/assist people to book railway tickets via the IRCTC site. These don't qualify as middlemen, for, where will people without a computer or easy access to a railway booking office go? It is making the system and the site/platform user friendly, while not compromising on security, that is a no-brainer, but the ministry will not do anything about it.

What irks is that IRCTC electronic booking is supposed to be a fairly simple system. More complicated systems involve people-to-people interactions and several stages, for example, the RTOs that handle driver licenses.

Unmukt Chand: the concessions that India grants its success stories

Unmukt Chand, image courtesy: ibtimes.co.in

A few months ago, the Unmukt Chand story played out in the national media. The gist of the story is that Unmukt led the Indian U-19 cricket team to victory, but due to poor attendance (less than 33% required for sports quota at Delhi University colleges) was prevented from attending the university's exams for progression to next year. Eventually, media debates, celebrity pressure, and the government pressurized the university to make an exception for this new hero.

I find several things troubling with this episode.

1. A university, the specific college concerned, and the student's particular professors must be allowed to decide whether a student complies with the laid down policies. In this case, the sports quota attendance requirement of the university appears to have been 33%, which the student didn't meet. Let's not forget that the college itself is normally allowed to set a higher bar on university requirements, and further the professor for any particular course/paper can set an even higher bar. All this depends on the program the student is taking, etc. An outsider is not going to be able to adjudicate matters of violations of these policies, nor should they. The media forgot all about his, but instead created an image for the university and the college of being cruel to the heroic student.
2. What if the Indian team had not won, but lost badly in the world cup. Would the same exception (and pressures leading up to it) have been applied? In a matter such as this, the outcome of the student's participation itself should have no bearing on the policy. I'm sure there are so many other students who represent their colleges, states, or countries, in sports that aren't as glamorized as cricket. 
3. The government's response was most pathetic. See this report in CNN-IBN, quoting union minister of education Kapil Sibal. The exact quote was:

"...there should be a provision under university regulations where such emergency powers can be used in special cases in national interest."

This, I find most troubling. Again, something that the government itself should have no business interfering in. The academic policies of any college of university should be its own. Taking a straightjacketed approach of setting one-size-fits all policies across a state or country is exactly what has led to mediocrity being the standard. And Kapil Sibal has be useless in reversing or arresting this approach.

What, pray, is the "national interest" here, I ask, Mr. Sibal? Would you have played savior for a student that was not as successful? What do you see as a possible policy of the education ministry regarding these "special cases"?
I see this as being roughly "If there is potential for good PR for the government, go ahead and break the college's established rules."

Lastly, about the college and university policies in effect..
Now, beyond the 33% attendance rule for sports quota students (which by the way appears very reasonable), I don't know much about the way Delhi University or St. Stephen's College deals with these kinds of situations. It seems like more proactive mentoring of students, especially ones that are expected to be absent from lectures for the most part of the semester, is in order.

At least in the US, universities have a more continual assessment approach that does not necessarily put an entire academic year on the line for a student because of attendance across-the-board. Here are suggestions (these being already tried and tested in the developed world, not revolutionary) for our colleges to follow:

1. Allow students to meet each particular course/paper's requirements set by the professor of that course, including attendance. At the discretion of the professor, the student may be allowed to do, say, a term paper, instead of writing the exam, for which the professor can set a high standard.
2. Get rid of the year-by-year approach. If a student does not meet the requirements for a particular course/paper, allow him to take the course again next year. Why stop a student, summarily, from adjusting his course load according to his other activities? This, by the way, can give a student the ability to graduate ahead of time or a semester later, which should not have a "graduated to 2nd year" implication, just overall progression towards the required credit hours required for the program the student is in.

I understand that giving too much freedom to professors in India (where we have a lot of substandard professors) isn't a great idea, and we have a good reason for having standardized subjective exams at the university level. Still, a phased approach of qualifying colleges based on integrity levels and audits, should be used to move to a more flexible college education model. This is the kind of policy decision Mr. Sibal's ministry should be making..

I hope Unmukt Chand or his supporters don't get peeved by this article. Nothing against his accomplishment, but he sure has received special treatment.

A Carefully Cultivated Image for a Hollow Personality

Image courtesy: IBN Live

If there's one personality in India that the media falls head over heals to glorify, working in uncanny sync with the Congress,  it is Rahul Gandhi.

The Congress has dynasty politics issues beyond the Nehru-Gandhi family. Two examples - Jyotiraditya Scindia, son of Madhvrao Scindia is presently Minister of Power; Sachin Pilot, son of Rajesh Pilot is Minister of Corporate Affairs.

While these two others young ministers might not be where they are in politics without their fathers, they are at least being put to a test. At the end of their ministerial stints, they can be evaluated. See this interview of Scindia where Karan Thapar grills him on dynasty politics. Scindia comes across as naive and apologetic, nothing more.

With Rahul Gandhi, there is no test. With each passing month, with nothing worthy of addition to his resume's empty accomplishments section, the Congress party and its top functionaries push the young Gandhi up the party's ladder in the hopes that they are considered more loyal than the others to the Nehru-Gandhi family.

• In his latest kissing-up, Salman Khurshid has declared that Rahul Gandhi is their commander for the next poll. Rahul Gandhi's prior impressive performance in Uttar Pradesh is probably why he is being made the 'commander' for the national elections (#sarcasm.) Most other major parties must be laughing at the way a completely accomplishment-less person is being handed more and more responsibility, while more seasoned politicians are being kept away from providing any meaningful direction to the party.
• Digvijaya Singh, for reasons best known only to himself, keeps singing Rahul Gandhi's praise. Perhaps because he is credited with being a key mentor of the Gandhi. If with the money muscle of the Congress it were to come to power again, Digvijaya Singh might be nursing hopes of becoming a shadow power of some kind behind the prime minister-in-waiting. 

While on the topic of Rahul Gandhi's 'accomplishments with the youth Congress' that the party keeps advertising (his only 'accomplishment', mind you), the statistic being bandied about is a significant increase in membership numbers. While the numbers may have been correct, this does not necessarily count as an accomplishment of any significance in politics. Any marketing drive is bound to add some numbers. Do we know if there was any ground-level improvement in the functioning of the party in any rural or urban centres? Do we know of any non-dynasty youth that are being groomed to become future leaders of the party? This report includes several quotes from Congress functionaries that talks about Rahul Gandhi's unverifiable accomplishments, like that of bringing in performance-based accountability, etc. These might be believable about someone who has risen through the ranks, not about someone who has no accomplishments to his name whatsoever.

Where's the Media's Good Judgement?
While everything the Congress might do to boost the image of their prime-minister-in-waiting, the media should show better judgement and not merely publish the Congress' press releases.

• Has there been one interview of Rahul Gandhi on any national issue? Does no media house have that kind of reach within the Congress party? Every leader in every other major party is available for interviews and quotes, why not this one?
• Each time Rahul Gandhi makes a 'visit' to some place for photo opportunities, the media laps it all up. They do not bother to check if anything meaningful came of any of his visits. If he really wielded that much power in the party (and cared for issues), the state of affairs in the country and the ministries' incompetence in even each-to-change problem areas like sanitation would not continue. In many cases, the problems he 'reviewed in person' could have been solved by simply not wasting lakhs of rupees on his chartered flight and security, but instead applying it to, say, bring water to the village. I have not seen one scathing Op-Ed or editorial on these blatant photo ops.

Public Intelligence Failures...

David Petraeus and his alleged extramarital lover
Image courtesy: therightscoop.com

Yesterday's news of David Petraeus's resignation as director of the CIA was surprising. Mostly because of Petraeus's seeming 'can do no wrong' image that I had built in my mind, from his tenure in the US Army.

TV news reports discussed the FBI (counterintelligence division's) investigation that exposed this affair after analysis of his personal email accounts. The woman in question, or her close aides, was suspected of having had access to them.

The unravelling of this episode set me thinking about (counter)intelligence failures for India. The one episode I vividly remember is that of Rabinder Singh of the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external spy agency, because this was all over the papers a decade ago. 

Rabinder Singh's disappearance from India, evading counterintelligence who were in pursuit, was far more high profile than any other that I can remember. This Wikipedia article Singh describes the Rabinder Singh affair very briefly, and this one by B Raman, former IB chief, goes into much more detail on this affair and some others. 

What surprised me was that Rabinder Singh was not a mole for Pakistan's ISI, but that of a 'friendly nation', the USA. Friendly or not, a lot of risk is taken to cultivate an asset with access to sensitive information. It was my impression earlier that the USA, with its liberal immigration policy, was a haven inside its borders for spies of other countries (it is; remember the exchange with Russia of long-term stationed spies recently?) who might make an entry through study visas, for example. The Rabinder Singh affair, where his sister, a US citizen, played a role in helping the CIA cultivate him, tells me that immigration is probably a useful thing for the US, giving it good reach into pretty much any country in the world through relatives and cultural links.

 

Hamid Gul, the director general of the ISI during wind-down of the US covert operation in Afghanistan in the late eighties, said in a TV interview, that when he was the DG, a copy of any paper that was signed in the PM's office in Delhi was on his desk before the ink dried. While Gul is a lot of empty bravado, I hope that level of ISI reach into India is not the case today. Especially since Pakistan is a lot weaker now than it was in the 80s and 90s.

A low-level Urdu translator in the Islamabad Indian high commission was compromised by a male ISI agent two years ago. An Indian army office on a training trip to Dhaka was compromised a year ago by an ISI woman agent, but admirably, this officer admitted to the compromise and alerted his superiors.

With all the technology in place today for national security and espionage, the importance of human intelligence has never been higher. How come one never hears of a mole that the RAW cultivated inside Pakistan or other countries in the world? Is the RAW really that good at having its moles evade counterintelligence? I highly doubt it.