Assam: Live streaming of base kitchen starts at Katihar

This now allows passengers to live stream kitchens 24 x 7 throughout the year to see how food served on trains is made and packaged.

Guwahati

The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) had developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) module to detect anomalies in the standard operating procedure of the Indian Railways by using CCTV footage. This now allows passengers to live stream kitchens 24 x 7 throughout the year to see how food served on trains is made and packaged.

The base kitchen at Katihar has become the first such base kitchen in N.F. Railway to start such live streaming. Katihar base kitchen supplies food items to Rajdhani and other express trains. Presently N.F. Railway has 5(five) base kitchens at Katihar, New Jalpaiguri, New Coochbehar, Guwahati and Dibrugarh for supply of food items to trains. There are also plans to introduce the same live streaming facilities in all such base kitchens shortly.

It may be mentioned here that such live streaming was suggested by Railway Minister Piyush Goyal during a review meeting. The move has been made to increase transparency and ensure quality. It was developed in association with an artificial intelligence and vision computing company called Wobot. If an issue is captured, a ticket for the same will be automatically generated and an alert is sent to all through an email, and even the IRCTC portal. The performance of base-kitchens can be monitored and viewed through reports given in the online platform.

It may be mentioned here that such live streaming facility is conspicuous by its absence even in airline catering sector. Live streaming allows viewers to take a peek into the food preparation and packaging process. Live streaming will go a long way in increasing transparency and public confidence in the quality of food being cooked at IRCTC-monitored base kitchens. The live streaming can be accessed by anyone on IRCTC’s website under the gallery link.