Swachh Bharat

Maintaining personal hygiene is necessary for many reasons; personal, social, health, psychological or simply as a way of life. Keeping a good standard of hygiene helps to prevent the development and spread of infections, illnesses.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched Swachh Bharat Abhiyan from Valmiki Basti in New Delhi on 2nd October 2014, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. The Prime Minister asked citizens to change their mindsets as cleaning is not only the responsibility of safai karamcharis. The ambitious drive includes sweeping, removal of garbage, debris and unauthorised encroachments from the roads, markets and residential places. The campaign is aimed at making India a clean country by 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

A clean environment ensures the continual existence and survival of all life on Earth. Cleaning the environment reduces pollution, protects unique ecosystems, prevents the extinction of endangered species and conserves resources, such as water, land and air. A clean environment ensures the protection of biodiversity and ecosystems upon which human life and all other life on Earth depends.

If you look around, trash and litter is everywhere. Nobody seems to care about the waste, and how we discard it. If anything, we add to the garbage that is already abundant in the open and is everywhere. Littering a plastic cup on the road-side, after we done using it, is the norm. No one realize anything wrong with it. Throwing our waste on the street, and right outside our own house is a part of the daily routines. That’s how we are, that’s what we think is normal. Having waste and garbage scattered around everywhere does not bother us. We are content within ourselves as long as our house is polished clean up to the front doorstep. When it comes to surroundings, that’s where our responsibilities seem to end. That’s where we tend to stop – our doorsteps.

Taking context of travel & transportation: Throwing waste everywhere makes it difficult for other passengers during the journey and for the next passenger coming in. It takes 2 hours to clean the bus thoroughly from inside and outside after a journey. After a journey bus is filled with empty wafers packets, Biscuits, Bottles etc. this leftovers can be easily carried by the respected passengers but it is generally ignored. Due to this ignorance, Wash room in our bus Club One got choked several times because customers used to litter in the toilet

Sooner or later we have to realize this problem. We need to change our mentality on how we treat our neighborhood and surroundings. Littering is socially accepted in India – nobody minds, no one cares! We can make all the progress, we can make all the economic strides alongside the rich nations, but we can only go so far if we are surrounded by the smelly dirt piles and garbage. Financial and economic breakthroughs are good. However, along the way, what we really need is a change in our mentality to care for our environment, to care for our own surroundings. And, we need to realize this at personal level, sooner than later.

Online Bus Travel Industry in India

The bus travel industry in India is unorganized and highly fragmented. It is a 120 billion annual turnover industry with a growth rate of 25% per year. This industry is growing phenomenally in India, being one of the most preferred modes of transport for millions of Indians. There are around 2000 private bus operators which function with almost 20000 buses on point to point routes. In the Indian bus travel industry, most of the private players were regional players and did not have a pan India presence and therefore there was a lack of a centralized platform for organized scale of operations.

Despite of growth of online ticket reservations in India through renowned players like makemytrip.com (airline) and IRCTC.com (train), there was a reasonably slow growth when it came to online bus reservations. The role of IT in revenue management is prominently discussed by many researchers. The reasons for this slow growth could be attributed to several reasons like the unwillingness of the majority of the Indian population to book their bus tickets online, low internet penetration and more than that, the unavailability of a proper online platform to book their bus tickets.

The major challenge with the Indian bus ticketing industry is that despite of being used by millions of people it took a long period to witness some innovations in this sector. Moreover, within the travel industry it is noticed that the train and flight ticketing had centralized booking and reservation process implemented much earlier than bus travel industry. The bus operators are scattered across the country largely supported by conventional travel agents. There was an absolute need for transparency within the industry so that consumers can avail the services of a centralized system where they could be acquainted with the information regarding the total number of bus routes in operation, prices, availability, seat preferences, cancellations, refunds and feedback options.

E-ticketing or electronic ticketing in India is changing the landscape, especially air travel and railways ticketing coming a long way ahead. There are research studies which have discussed that service providers could increase their transactional efficiencies and expand their services by adopting modern IT in revenue management.

Growth Drivers of online travel industry in India:

 (i) Growth of Internet, (ii) Growth in Low-cost transportation option (iii) Secure payment mechanisms

Main Challenges:

 (i) Low margins and high operating costs (ii) Poor internet and credit card penetration

There are several players in this domain Redbus being the market leader, other players are Abhi bus, Simply Bus, Yatra.com and Bus Safar.com. With the redbus revolution, the potential in this arena is not out of sight. The competition in this business comes from basically travel agents and ticketing companies who have presence locally, nationally and few of those who even have an international presence. redbus over the years has adopted a business model which is quite difficult for the competitors to replicate due to which redbus is ahead in the contest.