The use of social media by railway minister Suresh Prabhu has caught the attention of Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, which will now study the grievance redressal of the passengers by the railways on a real-time basis. The case study on the railways will be part of the study material at IIM-Ahmedabad.

Prof. Sunil Maheshwari of IIM-Ahmedabad, who teaches human resources management, was attracted to the use of social media by Mr Prabhu for reaching out immediate relief to the passengers after reading a few media reports. “The use of social media for customer services by such a mega organisation like the railways is wonderful and unique. The whole world can learn a lot out the experiences of the Indian railways,” said Mr Maheshwari, while speaking to this newspaper.

Incidentally, the world over, the railway operators only provide information to the passengers. In contrast, the Indian railways has emerged as the only rail network, which responds in a quick time to the distress of the passengers and provides relief.

“We are keen to study the operational details of the whole exercise involving the social media to connect with onboard train passengers. We want to document the whole effort and the system involved, including the dedicated team put up by the railways. The case study will be used for teaching purposes for students at IIM-Ahmedabad,” added Prof. Maheshwari.

After Mr Prabhu began responding to the distress messages of the passengers on his Twitter handle, his office has put up a dedicated cell in the ministry of railways, which coordinate the grievance redressal. Mr Prabhu has mandated all general managers (GMs), divisional railway managers (DRMs), senior officials in the Railway Board to be on Twitter and their handles have been publicised for passengers to connect with them.

Sources said that the Railways would soon hire a professional agency to man the whole process of grievance redressal of passengers. Mr Prabhu is known to personally oversee the response of the officials to the distress messages of the passengers.

The IIM-Ahmedabad had also studied in the past former Union Railways Minister Lalu Prasad’s claims of having turned around the railways.