A man traveling with his unwell father on Sunday received extraordinary help when his train stopped at his destination in Rajasthan. He had tweeted asking for a wheelchair and assistance to take his father out of the train during a short halt at Merta Road station. To his surprise, the ministry responded to his tweet and extended him all necessary help.
@DRMJodhpurNWR @GMNWRailway @RailMinIndia
Cn d train 16587 to stop at merta road for 10 mins than usual 3 mins tom mng?cn I get wheelchair?
— Pankaj Jain (@pankajjain86) November 28, 2015
Pankaj Jain, a businessman, found the station master, a few porters and railway staff waiting with a wheelchair when the train arrived.
A senior railway ministry official said the staff responded immediately to Jain’s tweet and escorted him and his father out of the railway station.
Jain had taken his father to Butati Dham for treatment, which is around 35km from Merta Road. The train reaches Merta Road at 3.15am and halts only for 5 minutes, so he was worried as how he and his father would deboard the train.
“The station master, coolies and railway staff with a wheelchair were waiting at the platform. They helped me and my dad in getting off and escorted me to the gate,” an impressed Jain told a leading daily.
Earlier this week, a woman passenger, who was travelling alone on an outstation train in Maharashtra, was immediately attended to by authorities after she sought help through a tweet directed to the Twitter handle of railway minister Suresh Prabhu.
The commuter, identified as Namrata Mahajan, was being harassed by a male passenger at Shegaon. After her plea for help, she was attended to by RPF jawans at the Bhusaval railway station.
The railway minister appears to be taking a cue from his colleague Sushma Swaraj. More than once, the Foreign Minister has responded to calls for help on twitter.
In the past year, she has reacted to the evacuation request of a Yemeni woman married to an India, helped a woman who lost her passport and money in Germany and also helped rescue a woman who was being held in South Africa.
Social media has been an important tool for outreach for the government, and perhaps the most twitter-savvy of them all is Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has over 16 million followers.