3 Major Challenges India Face in Going Cashless - DeMonetisatione

As we all know we are going through DeMonetisation phase where government has taken initiative to ban old notes and introduced new currency and during this phase, Government is peaching for cashless economy by encouraging people to use technology like e wallet, online banking, online shopping.

As an IT professional I really appreciate this move as this will surely benefit us in future. But for the time being there are some challenges we face for going cash less, in this blog I am going to explain what are those challenges and how we can overcome it.

1) Poor Internet Infrastructure and Internet Reach

This is the most common problem we face in India. Our Internet Infrastructure is poor till date. In may parts of the country there are no internet connections. In many part we still have to depend on Wireless connections, which are not reliable. And if there is a connection speed is very slow and not stable. Mobile Internet connections are also working slow. People are still using 2G connections in many part of area which is hard to use.

Take my example, I am leaving in Outer part of Ahmedabad and in my area there is still no reliable broadband connection. I am using wireless connections since last 3 to 4 years. 

To overcome this problem we must improve our internet infrastructure and make it available in all part of the country with decent speed that can be used without any difficulty. We must also increase mobile internet connections and spread it to all the areas.

2) IT Awareness, Awareness about Technology, IT Education

This is I think the biggest challenge we have. Most of the people don't know about technologies. They don't know about mobile / internet banking, online shopping, Paytm etc. Most of the people are also afraid of using technologies or use them in wrong way. That leads to other issues like fraud, cheating etc. 

For example, my cousin started using net banking but he saved username and password in draft SMS. Now that's the biggest mistake. If anyone see this, they can easily access it. This is the problem, people don't know about dangers of online technology.

• They don't know what they should do and should not do while using technology.  
• They don't know what can go wrong. 
• They don't know what's the importance of strong password.
• They don't know how to keep watch on their online activity.
• They don't know what should do in case their accounts are hacked.
• They don't know what is Paytm, what is Freecharge etc.
• They don't know what information they should not keep on web.

To overcome this problem we must educate people about online technology, make them understand what are the benefits of it and what are the drawbacks, what security measures they have to take. 

3) IT Security

As I have mentioned in above that we need security measures to increase confidence in use of IT technology. There are lots of fraud happening in this. For example anyone calls you and claim that they are speaking from bank and ask about your confidential information and you don't know about it and give away your information and then you are doomed, in few minutes your account is empty. Same for online shopping, you order something and you never get it or get something else.

To prevent this and to increase confidence in online technology we must enforce IT security. We must have strict cyber laws to prevent frauds. Educate people about this so they don't get trapped in frauds. We must enforce this and gain use of technology.

How to Book Confirm Tatkal Ticket on IRCTC Website

Hello,

I am very excited to start this new blog series. In this series I am going to share some tips and tricks I use on internet to make life easy. This trips and tricks comes from my own experience. I hope this will make your life easy.

In this first post I am going to explain some tricks to book confirm Tatkal ticket on IRCTC website. All the the readers from India will know about IRCTC. For the readers who are not from India. Here are some information on IRCTC. IRCTC is the website launched by Indian Railway. This gives facility to book tickets online. This website is splendid and it improved a lot since last few years. Million of tickets are booked through this website in every month and count is increasing each day.

Now we all know about Tatkal booking. Tatkal booking for any train will open 24 hours before the date of departure of train and there are limited seats and there is always a heavy rush for booking so you have to do something different to be ahead in rush. In this blog I am going to explain, what you can do.

First of all, for Tatkal bookings, there are different timings as of date (on 19 December 2015). Tatkal booking of all the AC classes starts at 10:00 AM , 24 hours before date of departure. So for example if a Train is running in Friday night. It's Tatkal booking will open on at 10:00 AM in morning on Thursday for all the AC classes and sleeper class bookings will start from 11:00 AM in morning. So here is what you can do to make sure that you get confirm tickets. Please note that using this tricks I was able to get confirm Tatkal tickets from Ahmedabad to Mumbai in peak season.

First of all here are some check lists, you should have or be prepared.

1) Make sure you have good internet connection. I suggest minimum 2 MBPS broadband connection. Do not depend on wireless connection or dongles. It may fail in between.

2) Keep your credit cards, debit cards, net banking details with you. Do not search or remember it at end moment.

3) Keep your mobile with you as you may have to enter OTP if you are using credit card or net bankings.

4) Be very firm about train selection. Select one train in advance. For example there are at least 10 to 15 trains between Ahmedabad to Mumbai. From that you have to choose one train in which you want tickets. There is no time for search or checking weather the seats are available or not. Because meanwhile you search and choose, all the seats are booked.

5) Be ready with your list of passengers and their required details. At end moment do not ask what's your age? or what's your full name? etc. Be ready with that.

Ok, so now you have all the things required let's go for it. First of all open the IRCTC website five minutes before the booking. So if you are booking for AC classes open it at 09:55 AM and for sleeper open it at 10:55 AM. So check your time and login. Ohh but wait, you can be depend on time displayed by your computer or clock. Because it may not be displaying proper time. It may be here and there for couple of minutes. This types of website works on the IST  (Indian Standard Time) and not your computer time or clock time. So to know timings. Go to following website and see the correct time and keep it open.

http://www.timeanddate.com/time/zones/ist






Login to IRCTC and search your trains, select the train and select the class and select Tatkal in quota.

You will see above list. When you click on quota so will see following.

As you can see above, it will show you number of seats available for Tatkal booking. But there will not be any book now button because booking is not yet open. So what to do, sit back and relax and wait till its open? Nooooo, you can not sit back and relax. Because in websites like IRCTC, there is a user session, if you do not do any activities for some time in website, your session will be expired and you will be logged out. So you have to login again and search again and meanwhile all the seats are gone. So you have to do some activities. As you can see in above image there is a refresh button. That will refresh the seat availability. Keep refreshing it every 30 seconds and keep watching time in IST clock. Sometimes what I observed is refresh button is not available so what do. In this case you can keep clicking on class in train list, it will refresh the seat availability.

 Do not refresh it every second as sometimes it will log out with error.

Keep checking IST click till it's 10:00 or 11:00.

It's the time now. Go for the booking. Refresh it one more time and Book Now button will be available.

Click on Book Now and go.... First screen will be passenger information. Fill it out as quickly as possible. Do not waste time in identifying captcha if it's not readable properly. Just refresh captcha and get the new one. Because if captcha is wrong, it will take time to reload the page and show the error. 

Quickly select your payment methods and go on payment site and pay. I am sure you will get confirm tickets, if you use this simple tricks suggested here. 

Let me know if this was helpful to you.