Malgudi Express: From the pages of RK Narayan to the railway tracks of Mysore. - Vageesh

Re-branding or marketing can't save or rather bring back this dead elephant.
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Branding and re-branding of a service is required when it is new or has competition. Here is a monopoly and something existing for more than a century, so not at all needed. All know what Railways is, nothing new to tell the populace :)
Immaterial of new publicity gimmicks like free...
more...

wi-fi, colorful liveries/logos; people know at the core the dirtiness of trains and more importantly how late running trains are and most important of all - the struggle to get a seat.
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I will just give an insight to road transport to show it's just the time taken to reach their destination which people look for, not the outside glitz of the transport or the ads promoting them.
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Take Madurai's Arapalyam Bus stand for example: the bus stand is not at all developed. Stinking and no basic clean toilet facilities and certainly no free wi-fi or glitzy food courts; but still thousands throng them and board the buses. They are not bothered about the facility. All they need is to have an ASSURED seat to travel and to reach their destination on time (the buses are clean too).
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Travelling masses don't care for the logo or graphics or aesthetics of the mode of transport, or if Sanjeev Kapoor is cooking the food today or Ritu Beri has designed the dress worn by Driver and Conductor ...... just reaching the destination in time is needed.
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From my travel I can say that - Short distance travel like say upto some 500Kms, people right from Haryana/Punjab to TN have mostly switched to buses. An irreversible process.... No marketing and re-branding or new Humsafar liveries will bring them back.