India Railways in its first ever crowd-sourced brain storming is asking 13 lakh employees to come up with a new idea of improvement

India Railways to revamp the services and build its brand image in a better way is involving each and every employees of the organization. The 13-lakh odd employees of the railways have been asked to suggest at least one new idea. From a railway gang-man to a general manager, the employees working across the Indian Railway’s 17 zones are suggesting what they would do, if they become the railway minister.
Till date almost a lakh of new ideas have been received by the railway minister. A panel of seven joint secretary-ranked officers have shortlisted 1400 ideas from the lot. An internal patenting has been conducted to prevent duplicity.

The idea is to select the best 15 ideas from the lot and present the business plans to Narendra Modi during a railway offsite scheduled to be held in Haryana's Surajkund between November 18 and 20.

Named as Vikas Shivir with a tagline "Why settle for ordinary when excellence is achievable,, the event is being arranged to showcase the Indian Raiways’ collective ideas to the Prime Minister. Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu and top rail officials will be present at the meet.

"This is the first-of-a-kind exercise of crowdsourcing of ideas from railway employees across India. The idea here is to energise an organization of 1.3 million people and force everyone to come up with innovative ideas to raise additional revenues and improve services,” a senior official in Rail Bhawan involved in organising the Surajkund meet told The Economic Times.

He explains that this exercise will reverse the earlier top-down approach where the idea gets generated and accepted by the Railway Board, IR's highest decision-making body, only to be implemented on the ground by the vast majority of railway employees.

Former railway board chairman SS Khorana told the ET that the organisation is being forced to think differently because of its deteriorating financial health. "The reality is that freight loading is below par and the earnings from passengers have not grown along expected lines. I doubt whether the flexi-pricing mechanism, introduced recently, will make any difference to the revenues,” added Khorana while speaking to the financial daily.

(Image: India Times)