There was, therefore, considerable scope for reforming the functioning of these RRBs. After the revamp there is now to be a special regulatory authority in the form of a Railway Recruitment Control Board (RRCB) comprising senior government officials whose job it will be to ensure that the 19 RRBs in the country conduct themselves with both transparency and accountability. It has also been laid down that the RRBs themselves will comprise only senior railway officers -- these will not be ad hoc appointments as has been the case thus far. Further, examination procedures are also to be reformed with answer sheets to be evaluated by the concerned RRB as well as the central authority. Of course, if the men and women hired to police the RRBs do not conduct themselves with propriety, their appearance on the scene,far from providing the salutary effect intended, could mean just more influence-peddling.

The Railways, given its enormous scale of operations and its pan-Indian presence, has always been the largest employer of trained and untrained personnel in the government. It is for this reason that care must be exercised at every level to see that procedures for recruitment are carefully set down and scrupulously followed. Also recruitment of this kind has often been influenced by caste and communal considerations. This, of course, is to be deeply abhorred. Nitish Kumar's move to guard against such extraneous influences by having representatives from the SC/ST and OBC categories, as well as from minority communities on these boards, is therefore to be commended. But there is a caveat to all this: a system is only as good as the people who run it. As the rail mantri swishes his new broom around he should never forget this cardinal principle.