After facilitating comfort travel for the poorer sections of society through “Garib Rath” trains, Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav is now all set to throw open the railway platforms for the farmers.
Indian Railways plan to start kiosks in 7,500 stations where the farmers can sell their vegetable and other produce. The Railways will provide container service for ferrying the products.
Refrigerators would be provided in these stalls to ensure better shelf life, Mr Yadav told reporters after presenting Nasscom IT User Award to eight organisations that had excelled in IT usage for the year 2006.
“Vegetables, milk and milk products, fruits and pulses will be available in these stalls. We will implement the project through joint ventures,” he said.
By September-October, the Railways also intend to  implement a large number of major IT projects costing almost Rs 6,000 crore.
One of the priority areas will be implementing an enterprise resource planning (ERP) package that can cater to 2.5 million staffers of the Railways.
Call for IT support
The Railway minister also invited IT companies to work on the IT and logistics support for the third dedicated freight corridor, which the Railway ministry is planning to operationalise soon.
“But we should look for solutions from within the country instead of importing technologies,” he cautioned.
Mr Yadav who publicly displayed his apathy towards information technology when he was the chief minister of Bihar, said he was not against the technology.
“The technology can bring the backbenchers in the society in the forefront. Look what the mobile phone has achieved,” he told the IT professionals.
Asserting that IT was required to improve the passenger amenities and goods service, the minister said large-scale IT infusion was required to implement the goods train movement tracking system and creating a transport exchange that will monitor the goods movement continuously online.
Other IT challenges for the Railways include full optimisation, ticketing and other passenger revenue enhancement applications including distributing palm tops to ticket checkers for updating the passenger reservation list on-board.
Restoration of jobs
Asked about job cuts in the Railways, the minister said that he had written to the Prime Minister for restoring the 20 per cent job cut implemented during the NDA regime.
“Earlier reduction of manpower and privatisation were the buzz words to bring back an organisation out of the red. But we have destroyed the myth,” the minister asserted. 
NASSCOM HONOUR
Two Bangalore firms bag award
New Delhi, dhns: Two Bangalore-based companies — Biocon and Suprajit Engineering Ltd —have bagged the Nasscom IT user award, 2006 along with six other organisations that have utilised IT in a big way to realise their business targets.
The Union Bank of India, Indian Airlines, Tata Power Company, ITC Ltd, the IT Department of Andhra Pradesh government and Crest Animation Studios Ltd are other winners of the award. Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav gave away the prizes at a function here on Monday.
Instituted four years ago, the award acknowledges organisations that have implemented projects demonstrating the benefits of IT to the enterprise.