Comments on Indian Railways - 'Then and Thenner'

A story of the Indian Railways

In 1909 Gandhi said about the railways that they -

“accentuate the evil nature of man. Bad men fulfil their designs with greater rapidity.”

This changed in 1947 to

“Trains cannot be run for charity,”

This report also delightfully speaks about the subsidy culture -

Indian politicians are addicted to a tax-and-subsidy regime of bewildering complexity, and deterred from tampering with it by a crowded electoral timetable. The Mohan report, for example, estimated that 15% of Indian railway passengers, many of them railway workers, were enjoying discounted fares. Among the 42 categories of people listed as eligible for concessions are students, boy scouts, the elderly, the very poor, war widows, nurses, journalists and some “persons taking part in mountaineering expeditions”. Even some sorts of freight—fruit and vegetables and salt, for example—are subsidised.

What concessions have you used in rail travel? अपुन has used only इश्तुदेंट concession :)

The day... the music died...

Big blow for music listeners all over India; The End of Worldspace

Just when it was gaining in popularity.........

Hard to take; I'm going to be depressed :(

Even harder to understand is the logic of the new buyers, Liberty Media. They say,

Media reports on the internet speculate that Liberty Media sees better opportunities in Latin America and other markets and would therefore like to deploy the WorldSpace satellites to target those markets rather than in India.

C'mon guys, your revenues from Telugu/Tamil/Malayalam/Kannada/Carnatic/Hindustani/Hindi channel listeners is going to be profitable. I do not know what the assumptions of your business model were before you arrived at this decision.

Review, reconsider, rewind; PLEASE

PS: But, what Worldspace did to many of its customers - the suppression of information and renewal of subscriptions at a time like this is plain vanilla cheating!