Till some time back, the various Government run PSU’s and other departments always felt that they were not providing a service that could be challenged in court; that options such as consumer laws were only possible to be implemented if people had taken a service from a private company. It was only when they started getting castigated and losing cases in consumer forums and courts did the Government undertakings realize that they were also subject to the same laws and conditions as anybody else. And of course, as the economy opened up, and there was increased competition, this competition also drove the Government run departments to either shape up or lose out. The Railways has opened up somewhat and improved, but still there needs to be more improvement, as can be seen from this case:

AHMEDABAD: A consumer court has asked the Western Railway to pay Rs 6000 to a commuter for issuing journey ticket for wrong date and not cancelling the same. The court held that verification of details in ticket is primarily the railway staffers’ responsibility.
After hearing both the sides, member of the Forum, Jyotiben Jani concluded that it was the deficiency of service on part of railway authority, because despite mention of one date in requisition form, the booking clerk issued ticket of altogether different date. Hence, the Western Railway has been asked to pay Rs 400 as refund to ticket, besides Rs 600 for conveyance charges and Rs 5000 towards compensation for causing mental harassment to Malviya.

Overall this a good sign. Imagine the problem that would have been caused had the ticket not be cancelled, and been attempted to be used on the actual date of the journey. This would have revealed that the ticket was for a different date, and the person would have been left in a lurch, unable to make the journey.

Typically, Indian Railways has not been known in the past for its customer oriented nature; to get information, you need to either queue up at long lines for information, or dial a number where there is no guarantee that you will get through. However, change can happen to anyone, and the Indian Railways is trying its best to go modern.
So, in addition to being able to book tickets through the internet or mobile at the IRCTC site, customers can also subscribe to receiving alerts for changes in the ticket status. Say, you are waitlisted and want to find out your ticket status, then the service will send a SMS when there is any change in the status. This can be very useful since it is not so easy to find this information in an alternate way.
Details are available at this site.
- Services are provided currently by Airtel, Hutch, Idea, MTNL Delhi, MTNL Mumbai, Reliance and Tata. Subscribers have to register for this service by sending an SMS to 7245 with short code “PNR” followed by a space and the 10 digit PNR number.
eg : PNR 1234567898.
- PNRs of all reserved Railway tickets can be registered for this service irrespective of the mode of booking (Internet/Counter/Agents)
- On successful registration for this service, periodic SMS alerts would be sent to the registered Mobile numbers, with the status of the PNR at that time. The periodic alerts would be sent as per the following schedule :
a. On the 8th, 3rd, 2nd day and the day of journey (the days being counted with the day of journey as day 1) - the alert would be dispatched after 0700 hrs.
b. On the date of journey, the alerts would be sent as per the schedule below :
i. For trains with scheduled departure between 0001 hrs. to 1200 hrs. the scheduled PNR alerts would go after 2200 hrs. on the previous night (the day before the journey).
ii. For trains with scheduled departure between 1200 hrs. to midnight the alerts would be dispatched after 0700 hrs. on the same day.
- In case a ticket status is confirmed between any of these scheduled alerts, then an SMS alert would be sent as per the schedule, and the next SMS alert would be sent on the date of journey only.
- In case a ticket status is found as ‘Cancelled or Modified’ during any of these scheduled alerts, no more alerts would be sent.

People traveling in the railways are full fare faring customers, deserving of proper facilities and cleanliness. However, since Railways is a government enterprise, authorities feel that all such standards are just prescriptions and not actual things to enforce. So travelers have to put up with dirty stations, with beggars on the trains, and with general unsanitary conditions (including in the toilets). And the biggest issue is that Indian Railways has a large number of cleaning staff, ’safai karamcharis’, but given that you need enforcement, you would not expect things to improve.
The biggest issue is that for such kind of issues, consumers do not even have a channel to complain about that is easily visible to regular users. If you go on the net, then there are a number of places where you can lodge issues against the Indian Railways, for example
1. Rediff site tips
2. Trainenquiry.com
3. File your woes at mywoes.com
However, people traveling in the Indian Railways run Mumbai locals are reporting a lot of problems with regard to cleanliness of the trains, such as cockroaches, bugs, etc, and are not finding a listening post where the problems can be solved. Refer this article:

Though 2007 has been declared the year of cleanliness by Indian Railways, the Mumbai zone does not reflect it. Commuters complain that local trains and platforms on both WR and CR lines are infested with rats, cockroaches and termites. Railway staffers have been trying to bring the menace to the notice of their seniors, but without any results.
A system of carrying out periodic pest control operations on railway premises does exist, but only on paper. Railway staffers insist that no pest control drive has been carried out for a long time.
The results are evident down the line as one travels past Kandivli, Malad and Andheri. At each of these stations, staffers and commuters are complaining of the growing menace of rodents and termites. “We’ve been complaining against the contractors who do not carry out any pest control services, but no action is forthcoming,” said a staffer at Malad.
Commuters also face the problem inside train compartments. Though railway officials swear that rakes are cleaned regularly, travellers often complain about having to share space with bugs on a daily basis. “I see cockroaches crawling out from under the seats every day. It feels so dirty,” said Darshana Gupta, a first class traveller between Kandivali and Lower Parel.
Nearly 60 lakh passengers travel daily on Mumbai’s suburban railway network. Railway staffers say that the sweeping of stations is carried out in shifts, but the quantum of work is not in keeping with requirements. This is despite the fact that the organisation has a huge ’safai karmachari’ workforce for the task.
Railways claim that all big stations are washed periodically. The Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) station is supposed to be washed almost every night in the wee hours when services stop. About the issue of cleanliness, WR’s chief public relations officer Pranai Prabhakar denied that it was a serious problem.

What can a person really do in the face on non-cooperation from a government department in this regard ? The RTI Act is really not usable in this regard. Normally, commuters vote with their feet if they have an action, and that is what makes railways move. As an example, when low cost airlines came up and people traveling on long routes switched to them, it made the railways sit up and try steps to get people back. Hence, now many trains have better facilities, run more on time, and so on.