‘Railneer’ Bottles Unavailable
Unmesh Gujarathi
Sprouts Brand Story
Monetary relations are apparent between Railway authorities and so-called branded bottled drinking water selling companies. Hence, the ‘Rail Neer’s bottled water is not available at the railway platforms and commuters are helplessly compelled to buy expensive drinking water bottles. Thereby the railway officials and the so-called branded bottled drinking water companies are amassing huge wealth, revealed the Special Investigation Team of Sprouts.
Some years ago the sale of drinking water at Re. 1/- was launched with great fanfare at platforms to enable passengers to get cheap and pure drinking water. This evoked an overwhelming response from the rail commuters. But this scheme of the government could not sustain for long. (Here too, the monetary vested interest between the rail authorities and the private bottled drinking water companies is evident) The amount of corruption involved in the purchase of the costly types of machinery and later their disposal in scrap is still under wraps. Immediately after that about five years ago, the railways commenced the sale of ‘Rail Neer’ bottled drinking water at every railway station.
Till date the Rail Neer bottles are almost unavailable. Taking advantage of this, IRCTC permitted Central Railway to sell the so-called branded bottled water for some time. This has profited the vendors on the platforms immensely. Compared to Railneer, they get huge commissions on selling the so-called branded bottled water, thereby denying passengers cheap, pure drinking water.
There is a possibility of stopping the production of Railneer officially, today or tomorrow, on the grounds of not receiving a good response from passengers. Several attempts to contact A. K. Singh, senior public relations officer of Central Railway, proved futile.
