Illegal Insurance Scheme For Ticketless Travels in Indian Trains ?!

Upon detailed investigations by ‘special squads’, to its shock and surprise, the Indian Railways has found that, there is an illegal ‘insurance for ticket- less travel in trains in India’ run by some anti-social and fraudulent groups of persons. 

The metros, cities and sub-urban daily/ frequent commuters like office-goers and students are said to prefer to avail the illegal insurance scheme.

For obvious reasons such as:

•  the absence of reasonable returns for the premiums paid by the insurer and 
• the  inflationary effects in the long run and 
• the receiver of the benefits, if any,  used to be other than the insurer, life insurance in India has been losing its importance.

For statutory reasons and under compulsion, people go for general insurance for vehicles and houses.

So, instead of taking insurance policies, people prefer to make investments with reasonable and high returns.
For a small percentage of the risk factor, they do not want to lose the returns for their investments by paying insurance premiums.

However, in the illegal insurance for ticket less travel, because of the “Direct Benefit Transfer”/DBT, it appears that many daily commuters in Indian Trains prefer such an insurance.

Instead of paying the increased train fares and season tickets charges,  by paying a nominal ‘premium amount’ of Rs 100/- p.m. or so  to the illegal insurance agents they have been traveling without tickets in  Indian Trains.

As and if the above ‘insured’ ticketless train commuters are caught by the TTE’s in trains and /or in the stations, the amount of fine paid by the ‘insured’ ticketless traveler will be reimbursed in full by the ‘illegal’ insurance agencies.

The above illegal insurance is based on the fact that the percentage of ticketless travelers caught out of the total number of ticketless travelers is very much less.

The illegal insurance for ticketless travel is based on the principles of insurance, such as ‘life insurance’ covering the risk of life or ‘  ‘general insurance’ covering various risks such as loss due to fire and  theft etc. Both the ticketless travelers and the illegal groups running the scheme are benefited, at the cost of loss to the Indian Railways.

Though the Indian Railways has expressed its shock and surprise, as if the ‘insurance for ticketless travel in Indian Trains’ is a recent/ new mode of cheating by the passengers in hand with the illegal agencies, it is said that such ‘insurance for ticketless on travel in trains in India’ has been prevailing since more than 50 years in metros like ‘Mumbai’.

In order to protect the welfare of the honest travelers and to reduce and eliminate revenue leakages and losses by suitable and innovative  ways and means against the innovative modes of cheating by the anti-social groups and some dishonest passengers..