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First of all, I think that the government initiative in regard to hotel accommodation is a welcome move. Otherwise government treats its officers on duty quite shabbily and many time officers wanting to remain honest may find it difficult to discharge their duties with dignity. If you visit the circuit house in New Delhi or Bombay, you can usually find one or two young IAS officers on duty sleeping in their official ambassadors, since all rooms in the circuit house were occupied. These are the idealist ones. Their more 'practical' batch mates prefer to spend their night in a five star hotel at the expense account of some private company in their district or at the hospitality of some businessman.

Lack of concern towards genuine needs of employees for discharge of their duties is visible on every front. Some time back a relative of mine, a young IRSE AEN, had a minor accident. He did not have any official jeep. He had a schedule of night time LC inspections. He was going there on his scooter, could not see properly in the night and fell from his scooter. I pointed out to him that if he did not have any jeep and needed an inspection vehicle for a couple of nights, it was within the competency of his DRM to hire a jeep as per the SOP. So he should have asked his Sr DEN to get DRM's sanction. He told me that he had requested his Sr DEN but got so many alternative solutions from his Sr DEN (such as take a night goods train, ask control to give a memo to stop it at the LC, then from the LC get another memo to stop another goods train etc.) that he decided to complete his inspections on his scooter. But then, he is young and no folly greater than youth. A more seasoned AEN in his position might have commandeered any contractor's vehicle or better still may simply have called the registers at his residence. I believe that not providing resource to matching responsibilities is an implicit encouragement to corruption.

Coming back to the topic, railway system in India was an implant of an industrial era set up on a pre-industrial society. Railway needed an infrastructure to run that was simply unavailable in 19th century India and therefore railway decided to create their own infrastructure for many activities that in a more developed economy would have been provided by suppliers/ contractors/ vendors/ 3rd party service providers. ORH is also a by product of that era (and in most cases, continues to have facilities suitable to 19th century). Since then India has changed a lot esp. in Metros and big cities, but little has changed on wayside stations. Most of the railway officers above JAG don't have to visit or stay at wayside stations very often, however at these places, there is still no alternative to ORH.

What about the metro stations? Should we close down these ORH? Personally, I would prefer if they were. I hate every time I have to visit Railway Board and spend half my energies in getting a room to stay. I am sure other metros aren't any better. And I am not even complaining about the facilities (or the lack of it in this case). Just getting a roof over your head is a project. However, from the cost point of view I suspect that ORH are still much cheaper to Railways (which is no wonder going by the quality of service and accommodation that is provided). So IR is not going to do away with them in near future. I think as officers we can legitimately demand reimbursement when official accommodation is not made available and probably such demand might even be agreed. Blanket approval for hotel stay is neither justified nor will be agreed.