The Hindu Business Line : Railways taps NID expertise for image makeover

THOSE who thought that the modernisation of Indian Railways (IR) would stop kulhads (earthen pots for drinking tea), khadi upholstery and co-operative linkages may be mistaken.

The railway brass is working in tandem with the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad for an image makeover of a larger kind. On the cards is a `Railway Design Cell' at the NID, focused specifically on making the Indian trains look more in step with the times and less of a left-over from the pre-Independence days.

But all that was not on the agenda when a senior team of IR officers, led by the Executive Director of Coaching and Railway Board member, Mr R.S. Virdi, came calling on the NID team here less than a fortnight ago.

The mission was to inspect the `disposable mugs' designed by a Mr Sandeep Paul, a post graduate student of product design at NID, for possible use in the bathrooms of railway coaches. Made of a special quality paper, the disposable mug is among the seven products that are currently under incubation at the National Design Business Incubator (NDBI), a joint venture between the Department of Science and Technology (DST) and the NID.

Talking to Business Line, Mr Prashant Kutaula, Chief Operating Officer, NDBI, said the Railways may now look at the NID to provide a whole spectrum of solutions.

"The product has already been validated and found feasible and the railway officials now want to introduce the product for a three-month trial run in the Ahmedabad-Delhi Ashram Express.

Thereafter it will get replicated in other trains, first in the Western Railways sector and then in other areas. But, one may need to wait a few more weeks as we have to ensure proper design registration before making the disposable mug a commercial product," Mr Kutaula said. Even as the IR team ensured that the disposable mug would soon make an entry into the bathrooms of the some of the Indian trains, it has also decided to tap the design school for another product — a dustbin that could crush the waste products. Seemingly a tall task, but already among the scores of products churned out by the NID students, thus requiring only some simple fine-tuning before making it also chugs its way into the Indian trains.

The railway team, which also requisitioned the NID to work on a global positioning system (GPS) for optimising the use of its coaches and ensuring a rational usage pattern, called upon the design school to set up a focused Railway Design Cell. True to form, the Indian Railways found it was running way behind schedule when it was pointed out that the NID had suggested such a cell way back in 2000, but received no response.

Surely, things could be different this time round as Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav, the Railway Minister, seems to put hygiene and user friendliness high upon the priority list.