MoU Signed By Railway – Economics – Free PDF Download

Current Affair

• The Indian Railways has signed MoU with the RailTel, a Mini Ratna Public Sector Undertaking in order to  implement Phase II of e-office programme. Also, the  Indian Railways is to provide content on demand  services in premium, suburban, express and mail
• On January 14, 2020, the South-Central Railways and SBI signed MoU to implement door step banking in  585 railway stations.

Indian Railways: MoU with RailTel

• E-Office system is an integrated file management  system that will help employees manage data, content 
• Under the new phase, around 39,000 users are to be registered in 34 Railway divisions on the National  informatics Centre.
• The target is set to be completed by March 2020.

PHASE 1

• The Phase I of the project aimed at registering 50,000 plus users in 58 stations by March 2020.
• However, the Indian Railways have completed the target well ahead of time.

E-Office

• E-Office aims at adopting paperless culture.
• This will help reduce operational cost and also reduce carbon foot print.

NIC

• The National Informatics Centre was established in
• It operates under Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.
• It provides infrastructure to deliver Government IT services and also the initiatives of Digital India.

Content on Demand Services

• Under the project, the content such as shows, movies, educational programmes are to be made available in  paid and unpaid formats for a period of 10 years.
• The project will be implemented in several languages.
• The aim is to cover all the 17 zones of the Railways.
• Will be provided in express, mail, suburban and express trains.
• The service is to be provided by the RailTel unit of GoI.
• The project is to be implemented in 2 years.

SIGNIFICANCE

• Generate more non fare revenue.

MoU between Railways and SBI for  door step banking

• The MoU will enable direct pick up of cash from all the railway stations included in the MoU.

How is it now?

• The earnings generated at the railway stations were manually sent to nearest banks that were authorised to  collect the deposit on behalf of the Railways.
• This delayed the remittance of cash because of several factors such as availability of man power, holidays, etc.

BENEFITS

• Uniform cash remittance mechanism in all the railway
• Provide real time information about the cash that is deposited by different stations.
• Increased accountability
• Better supervision
• Unwanted accumulation of cash at railway stations.

WHY NOT ONLINE PAYMENTS?

• There are still persons in the interior parts of the country using cash to buy their tickets. Apart from  interior parts, cash is still used in urban areas to buy  tickets as well.
• In 2015, around 54% of tickets were booked online as compared to 2012. In 2018 the e-ticket sales have been  up by 14%. However, there are still an accountable  population using cash to buy their tickets.

Latest Burning Issues | Free PDF

Sharing is caring!