Pegged between Rs 14 crore (US$2,988) and Rs 16 crore, the CMS is a huge project by any standards. Despite this, it's a pretty straightforward concept. At its heart, is a database that holds information of all the crew-members. After, say, a train guard is selected for a journey or 'link', the system sends him an SMS, which he acknowledges. The guard then reports to the lobby (in railway parlance the lobby is where crew-members gather. It is a control center for the crew).

At the railway lobby, the CMS is present in the form of kiosks or thin clients that the guard logs into with the help of a biometric scanner. The CMS authenticates him, tells him which train he's working that day and informs him at which point on the route he needs to disembark. (See Crews Control)

When he gets off his shift, the guard stops by a kiosk, logs himself in, tells the CMS that he has ended his shift and reports any abnormalities he has observed like a patch of bad track or an unscheduled stop. The abnormality-reporting feature has an in-built dictionary, much like the one built into mobile phones, that helps crew-members file their reports by suggesting common words.

With the CMS, much of the brainwork that was done by divisional heads in tracking crew-members and assigning them duties is now done by algorithms. The focus is on freeing staff from the drudgery of calculating everything manually. More importantly, the system can assure that railway staff are employed optimally. "Crew optimization is enabled by CMS as the system keeps track of a crew's duty hours. It ensures that those who have served the requisite hours are given rest while those who haven't are called to report to duty," says Das.

In a few areas, the CMS can summon railway staff via SMS. The Indian Railways is trying to provide mobile phones to all of its train facing staff. In the meanwhile, crew-members are allowed to use their personal mobile phones.