Crowded as the Railways are, why not ask crowds for reform ideas?

Commission with, to asking for slogans for important government schemes and concepts for mobile apps, the government has shown that it firmly believes in the dictum “(a million or) two heads are better than one” when it comes to generating big ideas. However, Railways minister Suresh Prabhu — who jokingly appealed for divine intervention for a turnaround plan, in his budget speech earlier this year — has added a piquant twist by asking students of several premier institutions for suggestions not only on odourless toilets and water conservation but also how to curb ticketless travel, which is practically a national pastime.

While it is not quite the equivalent of getting hackers to help crack down on hacking, clearly, the minister feels only savvy youngsters have the bandwidth to gauge the true extent of the ingenuity of the habitués of ‘irregular travel’, which includes gambits such as ‘insured’ ticketless travel rackets by goons in the commuter belt. Considering the annual figure of artful fare dodgers may hit two crore soon, with 3.21 lakh cases detected this May alone, Indian Railways is still a far cry from the time when ticketless will mean paperless rather than illegal.