If Napeoleon Boanparte called England the land of shopkeepers, India is surely the land of middlemen. The establishment does it best to make things as difficult as possible for the direct buyer of goods and services, and promote intermediaries. Nothing exemplifies this more than the reservation system adopted by Indian Railways.
The basic problem is too many people chasing too few seats. Effective utilization of available resources alone would sole the problem largely. But the mandarins of the railway board goes overboard to reduce the utilization of resources. Just for a case in point, the rake sharing of Tea Garden Express and Ernakulam-Bangalore Intercity, wherein two daily services could operate with just three rakes was discontinued and both trains now have dedicated rakes, a total of four rakes. The additional rake could instead have found better use to make the Kochuveli-Bangalore tri-weekly daily and thereby solve the problem of shortage of train tickets on the Kerala-Bangalore route considerably. Of course, if that happens luxury bus operators would loose their livelihood, as would touts who in connivance of booking clerks arrange for out of turn reservation tickets. So what we have here is social justice, Indian Railways style.
The social justice considerations of Indian Railways reinforces when one tries to access the IRCTC website to make tatkal reservation. The demand for tatkal tickets is direct fallout of both real and artificial scarcity fostered by railways would probably beat competition for manna from heaven, and as such, anyone even a few minutes late after the starting bell at 8 AM need bother. But try logging in to IRCTC from your individual user account. The server would not grant you access until 8.10. Rather try approaching your local ticket agent for the same ticket. The ticket, generated using the same IRCTC server would be delivered at your doorstep by 8.10, of course at a hefty premium.
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