The Efficiency Deficiency

                When you move to a developing country, you don’t expect things to run as they would at home. If you’ve done even a scrap of research, you’ll expect the power-cuts (there’s one now), the snail’s pace internet and so on. We at home are in a privileged position that we can turn the hot water tap on in the certainty that a) water will come out and b) it will be above body temperature. (There may be exceptions, such as any postcode with a high student population, but that’s another issue.)

                I’ve said tonnes of times that we ‘Westerners’ aren’t here to impose changes, but I can’t help but wonder that everyone’s life would run a little more smoothly and progress would skyrocket if some simple, minor improvements were made. Take the train reservation system, for one thing. You all know by now that I’m a super fan of a good train, but the process of buying a ticket for one is a nightmare. The simplest way to get hold of one, is to go to a travel agent, pay an extra 100 rupees and have it all fixed for you. ‘Ridiculous!’ I hear you cry, ‘I am an independent traveller, an intelligent human being and an impoverished student. I can do it my own way!’ I’m going to be honest here, you can’t. When you go to the station, you are required to fill in a form with all the information of the train you want to catch. Firstly, the form is kept behind the counter, so there are arms from all directions groping through the hole in the class while some poor soul is trying to make a purchase. Once have the form in your sticky mitt, you have to fill in the details of the train you want to catch, which class, seat numbers and so forth. You cannot get the ticket without this fully completed form, but how do you know which train you want until you try to buy the ticket? Perhaps try the website beforehand– unintelligible. Even if you think you’ve got it all planned, inevitably you leave with something totally different. Or use the computerised system at the station? Step one is to type in the train number, which you don’t have. You have a slight advantage if you can read the Hindi sign, but you still need to know your train’s name and point of origin to identify it. The 2 minutes it takes to book a trip from Cambridge to Leeds online suddenly becomes 20 minutes for no real reason.

                But what I really don’t get is that nobody seems to see this as a problem! I actually tried to move a pile of the infamous forms to the table with pens provided for the purpose of filling it in, and everybody looked at me as if I’d just sprouted three additional noses. I’m trying to make everyone’s lives easier here, people! But I think we find ourselves back at the issue of education – a lack of questioning in school means a lack of questioning in life. Sticking to the status quo is easy, safe and hey, we all get our tickets at the end of the day, so what’s the hurry?