Indian Railways Catering

Food/meals supplied by Railway catering is very bad. No space for Quality, hygiene! Vegetarians are finding difficult to have these food!

Yes this true. The shops in railway stations will sell the things at higher prices because that is the place where customer has no time to argue and even think of it. This railways has to take care by doing some inspections on the shops and taking strict actions by cancelling their contracts or putting some fine on them. This needs to be addressed quickly.

The situation of the catering in the trains is truly terrible. The food is bad, unhygienic and expensive. There seems to eb no quality check on the food or the hygiene. Moreover, every single contractor on every single train overcharges the passengers but the railway officials seem to be blind towards this.
Even in trains like Rajdhani and Shatabdi, where pricing is not an issue, the quality of the food is invariably bad and has gone down even more over the past one year. Haldiram seems to have been given the contract for catering in Rajdhani recently but instead of improving the taste, this has made the food even more unpalatable.

I happened to travel to Vishakhapatanm from Hyderabad and returned the next day. Both days during the journey in the compartment, the sales boys are extracting extra money than the MRP. On packets made by IRCTC, they never print the MRP there by they charge more than 20% to 40% extra than the orginal cost. In Vijayawada Railway Station on Plotform number 10 i asked for packet of Idly & Wada which is costing Rs.35% as per the MRP printed on it. But they deliberately charging Rs.45 to 50/- When questioned, they arrogantly replying to go and complain where ever i can. There is outlet running by Heritage food products. They are selling buttermilk for Rs.10 where as the original price is Rs.8/- The same reply received from him also when questioned. It seems the railway authorities are hand in glove with the contractors otherwise no vender boy can dare enough to challenge a customer inspite of selling the item at exorbitant cost.

In this 21st Century- if one checks on the railways web site for catering services on 16590 Rani Chennamma Express. It shows NIL. So how does the Railways expect us to plan and book in advance for our food?