Indian Railways claim : 'Now no longer standing in long queues to book your ticket.'. But when we try to do it through IRCTC, it takes more time than booking a ticket through a ticket window. I can prove this :
Case A: Booking a ticket from ticket counter.
1. Take an Auto and go to the railway station : 30 mins (approximately)
2. Fill up the form : 2 mins
3. Stand in queue : 60 mins (maximum)
4. Book ticket : 1 min
5. Come back home : 30 mins
Total Time : 2 hrs 3 mins
Case B: Online Reservation
1. Switch on your laptop : 1 min
2. Check in IRCTC : 1 min
3. Login : 20 mins (This time is considering you have the fastest internet available, considering the heavily loaded advertisements on the site).
4. Fill in the 'Plan My Travel' Page and check for the Available Trains : 20 mins
5. Check Availability until you get your choice : 30 mins (since the availability window takes a long time to open)
6. Relogin due to some error message : 25 mins
7. Fill in the 'Plan My Travel' Page and check for the Available Trains : 20 mins
8. Go for Book My ticket : 10 mins
9. Fill in the details and say 'Book' : 5 mins
10. Confirm : 10 mins
11. Go for Payment : 5 mins (It takes lesser time to navigate through the bank websites)
12. Get a booked ticket : 5 mins (Assuming there is no communication failure)
13. Take a print : 1 min
Total Time : 2 hrs 33 mins
This is mostly the case when you try to book a Tatkal Ticket in the morning. Especially when you try to login at 8 am you never get through upto 8.30 am. If they say that there are many people trying to login at the same time, I do not buy that argument because technology today is too far developed to make such excuses.
Making a facility available to save time 'at the cost of time', is economically not a very good sign, since it increases the Producer Surplus, at the cost of consumers' time. The allocation of resources is highly inefficient causing a huge amount of deadweight loss in the economy of the country.
Kindly take this as a suggestion more than a complaint to bring India in the league of developed nations.
P.S. : The timings stated in both the above cases are approximations of my experience.
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