Laloo (the present Railway’s Minister) promised that railway stations across the country would be getting a makeover in the coming years. And things really do seem to be changing.
I recently traveled from Bangalore to Delhi. There were lots of small improvements everywhere: train timings were on television screens, you could check your email in an internet cafe, you could check the status of your reservation on a do-it-yourself touchscreen display, the ticketing counter was pleasant looking and modern, there were ATMs to withdraw cash etc. But the most innovative thing was that you could buy platform tickets via SMS! The way it works is that you SMS a particular number and you get an SMS back which serves as the electronic platform ticket. Wow!
The posh (by Indian standards at least) looking ticketing counters…
Bangalore Railway’s station’s Internet Cafe. You need a government issued identification like a driving license (which is duly noted down) to browse the Internet. The usual government paranoia… 
Also notice that the Internet Cafe is in collaboration with Tata Indicom (a private telecom company). This itself indicates a healthy trend in the Indian Railways of outsourcing non-core functions to private parties for enhanced efficiency. If the railways had setup their own Internet Cafes pretty soon the computers would fall into disrepair, internet connections would be unreliable, cafes would start closing really early… (you get my drift) 
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