As part of the “52 Reforms in 52 Weeks” campaign of the Indian Railways, Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw presented the Rail Tech Policy and the total digitalisation of the Railway Claims Tribunal (RCT) on Thursday.
Through the use of a specialised Rail Tech Portal and an end-to-end digital approach, the Rail Tech Policy seeks to engage startups, industry, and institutions in order to establish an ecosystem driven by innovation.
Simplifying selection rules, tripling scale-up awards, and doubling prototype financing support are all parts of the policy. For practical solutions, the railways will cover up to half of the development costs; for inventions that are successful, they will place large-scale orders.
Some of the main areas of focus include systems that detect elephant intrusions, systems that detect fires in coaches, systems that monitor track stress, systems that detect obstructions in fog, systems that resolve pension disputes, and systems that detect rail fractures using drones.
Models for innovation like the iDEX program in defence and startup frameworks in the tech and electronics industries served as inspiration for the strategy.
In Reform No. 4, the minister made an announcement on the E-RCT system, which will completely digitise and restructure the Railway Claims Tribunal with the help of artificial intelligence. Thanks to the change, travellers will be able to digitally file claims from any location in the country, and all 23 RCT benches will be able to process and adjudicate them online. The initiative’s 12-month target is to establish a justice delivery system that is citizen-centric, has better transparency, and expedites resolutions.
