Now, You Can Get A Head Massage On A Train

If a strenuous journey tends to rub you the wrong way, railway officials have offered an unusually simple answer&mdashhead and foot massages priced at Rs 100 each. Meant for passengers on board running trains, the novel venture will start with 39 trains departing from Indore in Madhya Pradesh. It is a proposal from the Ratlam division of the Western Railway zone.

"This is the first time that such a contract has been signed," said Rajesh Bajpai, the railway board&rsquos media and communication director. The idea came out of the railway&rsquos recent non-fare revenue generation scheme, where officials were asked for new and alternative ideas that could bump up revenue. The massage service seeks to not only alleviate aches and pains, but also increase the number of passengers. &ldquoRailways will earn an additional revenue of Rs 20 lakh annually and an estimated increase of Rs 90 lakh per year through additional sale of tickets from about 20,000 passenger(s) who will be the service providers," another official said.

Indian Railways earned Rs 501.25 billion in passenger revenue in the fiscal year 2017&ndash18, and is the largest employer in the world. With daily operations and maintenance carried out on a titanic scale, even a minor increase is hoped to reflect positively for passengers.