ER uses memes and social media platforms to create awareness among passengers

Kolkata: Memes and cartoons with popular characters or dialogues with punch lines are being increasingly used by Eastern Railway (ER) to create awareness among the people on various issues and services being provided by the Railways.

“Nowadays people are busy with their phones. We have information displayed at every nook and corner of the stations or platforms but they hardly pay attention to it. Hence, we are using social media platforms to create awareness among people who are already hooked to it. We are receiving good feedback from these platforms as well,” Chief Public Relations Officer (CPRO) Eastern Railway Kausik Mitra told Millennium Post.

Recently, ER took help of characters from 1969 Bengal comic-strip “Nonte Phonte” by Narayan Debnath to make people aware that whenever one finds themselves in a distressing situation in train, they can file a complaint with Rail Madad Helpline number 139 via SMS or through use of its online platform. The comic strip focuses on the lives of title characters Nonte and Phonte along with a school senior Keltuda and their boarding school superintendent. In the meme shared by ER, the angry boarding school superintendent is holding Keltuda by his collar. While Keltuda cries for help, Nonte suggests Keltuda use the Rail Madad Helpline number while Phonte pitches that the number is for train and not school. According to a Railway official, the information on passenger grievance redressal has been displayed in all stations and platforms but only few people are aware of it.

Hence, they have used memes to create awareness among people. The Rail Madad Portal integrates all passenger complaints onto a single platform enabling comprehensive grievance management and targeted corrective actions.

This is not the first time that they have taken help of social media and meme culture to get their messages to the people. They had used a scene from Priyadarshan’s film Hera Pheri (2000) to make people aware of fake railway recruitment rackets and requested people to only go by Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) then pay some amount to a fraudster to get a job in the Railway. In the fiscal year 2023-24, Eastern Railway’s personnel department detected more than 47 cases of fraudulent appointments exposing the nefarious activities of fake job racketeers preying on unsuspecting individuals.