A Phenomenon Called Indian Railways

Imagine the long queues that you had to experience at any Indian

Railways ticket booking counters at any given point of time. Reminisce

those days when you had to hop from one counter to another counter to

book long distance travelling tickets in case you wanted to purchase

both your onward as well as return journey tickets. And in the process

you wasted half of your day, or even a full day!






Things might nor have changed drastically in the last five years but
have improved for sure. We still have to wait in long queues to

purchase journey tickets from the counters. But they move faster and

one need not to hop counters in case he needs to purchase multiple

location tickets. Also we have the facility to book tickets online,

sitting at the comfort of our homes or offices. And in case you are not

net savvy, you can approach a nearby travel agent and purchase your

reservation ticket online by paying a meagre service charge.






All these and more! Truly Indian Railways have come a long way as it
rewrote history. IR’s journey from that of being a loss

making organization to a profit making organization over the past

decade has been phenomenal. While initiatives like wagon replacements,

changes of tracks from metre to broad gauge and India’s

soaring GDP has been vital contributors towards this transformation,

technology has played the most crucial role that revolutionized Indian

Railways and journey by train forever.






Indian Railways is the second largest and busiest rail network in the
world after Russia, transporting over 18 million passengers and more

than 2 million tonnes of freight daily. Introduced in 1853, Indian

Railways were nationalized in 1951. It has a widespread network across

the length and breadth of the country operating both long distance and

suburban railway systems. IR is divided into 16 zones that are further

sub divided into 67 divisions managed by zonal and divisional

headquarters. Under these divisions there are over 7000 stations that

requires to be manned by the railway persons.






Understandably, managing such a huge network across a country as
diversified as India, is a Herculean task. Considering the increasing

demand to systematize the entire operation and cater to the growing

number of passenger and freight trains, it was important to introduce

some robust framework that would provide IR the required bandwidth to

improve its overall operation, service and customer experience and last

but not least, profitability.






The
CRIS Connection




Railways operate in a dynamic and constantly changing environment. This
requires a continuous update of information about current status and

location of its assets. Being into the service domain, the only way to

improve its operation and thrive is to constantly collect and collate

accurate data on their current utilization followed by intelligent

analysis of the available information. One wrong step, and it can

create havoc jeopardizing both railway traffic as well as passenger

safety.  






Realizing the important role that information technology can play in
its railways operation, IR had embarked on a well-defined

computerization program during the early ‘70s. After the

early introduction of regular computer applications such as Pay rolls,

Inventory control and Operating statistics, IR went ahead with

deploying computers for productivity improvement through building up

operational databases. Within the period between mid 70's to early 80's

IR developed a blue print for further computerization within the

organization.






As part of its IT initiatives, the Ministry of Railways established
Centre for Railway Information Service or CRIS as an umbrella for all

computer activities on Indian Railways. Formed in 1986 as a society

that can function autonomously under the Ministry, CRIS was modelled as

the deployment arm of IR to design, develop, implement and manage its

various IT initiatives.






Over the years CRIS’ role has expanded from that of
application development, implementation and maintenance, and now it

does a lot of procurements as well since it is the nodal point of IT

project deployment for entire Railways. There are presently over 20

projects that are being handled by CRIS, some of which have already

been deployed and some are under various stages of development or

implementation. The initial mandate for formation of CRIS was to

conceptualize, design and develop and implement Freight Operation

Information System (FOIS), and later to deliver other subsequent

projects on IT.