The whole point of having such a weird system is to make it "difficult" for you to book a ticket. Think about the "common man" standing in a queue for 4-8 hrs trying to book that ticket when you could ideally book using your coolest newest gadget in seconds. Now that would cause a riot at the railway station booth. In Indian you never have enough resources available for the 1.3 billion people. So everything is rationed, including the online train tickets. It's like the IIT's or IIM's conducting the world's toughest entrance examinations only to select a statistically insignificant 1% of the applicants. Great Indian politics demands badly run government services. Private services are still banned in a number of areas including private universities, public transportation, power, Aeronautics ....
I doubt the "weirdness" of system is to bring "tech savvy" in par with "common man". If that were the intention why provide the feature of online booking at all ?
It is not entirely true that online booking benefits the tech savvy/elite. Before the advent of the online booking one has to go to the railway station (as they were the only places where you can reserve a ticket) stand in a long queue and make reservation. With online booking now there are many authorized railway travel agents at many parts of the city to whom one can go (if one is not tech "savvy") and they will do the booking charging a small fee.
Actually much of the sectors that you have mentioned have been deregulated:
1. Private Universities: No. But there are tons of private institutes under universities.
2. Public Transport: Trains no. Buses - in most parts of the country (eg. Madhya Pradesh)
3. Power: Tata Power, Reliance etc. Coal mining is the part that has not been privatized, AFAIR.
4. Aeronautics: No, but airtravel yes. Secondly, the aeronautics industry and research in India is still at a very nascent stage - so I am not sure if it really hurts the economy/society.
Comments
The whole point of having such a weird system is to make it "difficult" for you to book a ticket. Think about the "common man" standing in a queue for 4-8 hrs trying to book that ticket when you could ideally book using your coolest newest gadget in seconds. Now that would cause a riot at the railway station booth. In Indian you never have enough resources available for the 1.3 billion people. So everything is rationed, including the online train tickets. It's like the IIT's or IIM's conducting the world's toughest entrance examinations only to select a statistically insignificant 1% of the applicants. Great Indian politics demands badly run government services. Private services are still banned in a number of areas including private universities, public transportation, power, Aeronautics ....
I doubt the "weirdness" of system is to bring "tech savvy" in par with "common man". If that were the intention why provide the feature of online booking at all ?
It is not entirely true that online booking benefits the tech savvy/elite. Before the advent of the online booking one has to go to the railway station (as they were the only places where you can reserve a ticket) stand in a long queue and make reservation. With online booking now there are many authorized railway travel agents at many parts of the city to whom one can go (if one is not tech "savvy") and they will do the booking charging a small fee.
Actually much of the sectors that you have mentioned have been deregulated:
1. Private Universities: No. But there are tons of private institutes under universities.
2. Public Transport: Trains no. Buses - in most parts of the country (eg. Madhya Pradesh)
3. Power: Tata Power, Reliance etc. Coal mining is the part that has not been privatized, AFAIR.
4. Aeronautics: No, but airtravel yes. Secondly, the aeronautics industry and research in India is still at a very nascent stage - so I am not sure if it really hurts the economy/society.
Privatization is not deregulation.
+1