Corruption in Railways - Issues, Root Causes, Solutions

Dear Friends,

Below are the Issues, Root Causes and Solutions as identified by you on Corruption in Railways.

Our team is meeting with the new Railways Minister Mr. Prabhu very soon to share all Railways whitepapers with him and requesting action.

Please review and if you have feedback on any of the areas (Issues, Root Causes or Solutions), please mark under the right category and post it as a comment to this post.

Thanks for your participation!
Rajendra Pratap Gupta

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Corruption in Railways


Issues Identified:
1. The nexus between agents and railways authorities
2. Corruption in awarding contracts for disposal of junk/scrap
3. Bribes are asked for leaking the bid price for food contracts
4. Huge corruption in goods transportation – you cannot transport goods/vehicles through railways without paying bribes
5. Corruption in supply of engineering spares/ material
6. Accounts Department does not release payment cheque without commission (bribe - generally a % of order amount)
7. Station Master takes HAFTA from all the venders and bends backwards for politicians and goons
8. No mechanism to check the parking contracts. Extra parking charges outside railway station
9. The pantry boys asks for the compulsory tips towards end of the journey
10. Agents charge up to 300% of the original price of a ticket to get you a confirmed ticket
11. Railway police taking instalments from beggars and allow them to beg on railway stations
12. Major bribes asked for in the Railway recruitment process

Root Causes Identified:
1. Big demand and supply gap
2. Too much authority to the railway employees
3. Employees are lower paid as compared to the private sector
4. Workload is quite heavy
5. No timelines set for completion of work
6. Government policies are tedious to understand
7. People want their work to be done first and quickly
8. Pathetic customer feedback and redressal mechanism
9. Process of awarding contracts is mainly manual
10. No monitoring of the staff by seniors
11. Agents have access to VIP quota tickets due to their link ups with officials
12. Railway recruitment process is not computerised
13. Everyone wants their share of the pie when they can make it
14. Service providers become demoralized by interference from politicians and
resort to taking bribes
15. Employees feel unable to cope with the increased demands and expectations of consumers
Solutions identified:
1. The authority given to the railway employees should be curtailed
2. Salaries of the railway employees should be bought at par with private sector
3. Railway employees should undergo performance reviews every year
4. Officials caught taking bribes should be severely penalised
5. Transparency and device procedures should be brought in transactions so that one cannot indulge in corrupt means
6. A turn-around-time should be set for every process
7. Daily working of the railways should be computerised
8. Railway policies should be simplified so that a common man could understand it
9. A proper complaint redressal mechanism should be set up
10. Manual interaction in the tendering process should be minimised
11. Managers should keep a tight tab over the employees to churn out optimum performance
12. VIP quota in trains should be abolished
13. Railway recruitment should be computerised
14. IRCTC website should be updated with latest technology after regular intervals
15. The goods transport department should be streamlined
16. Only authorised vendors should be allowed in the trains/on the stations
17. Controls of the top brass should be tightened so that sincerity and uniformity flows down the ladder
18. Extra compartments should be added to trains on busy routes
19. Railway should be run professionally as a separate commercial corporation with latest HR procedures
20. Agents and touts should be banned more