Fare structure of Suvidha is highly impractical. Our way of governance can be called governance of extremes. Somebody is either pampered or mauled, somebody is either treated as a sacred cow or made a escape goat. They go on giving to some and snatching from others though the heavens fall , where as natural justice remains elusive.
Suvidha (formally PT) is an example of IRlys blindly imitating the Airlines. They did their bit of the so called home work by testing it during peak season on Mumbai-Delhi Rajdhani Route. This route connects the cities where the per capita income is amongst the highest in India and where there is distinctly a very high number of trips for business/ company purpose....
more... The result was successful and (over)enthused IRlys started introducing such trains in every nook and corner of country, even to very small cities. Since a larger portion of passengers are paying tax paid money and not so rich, it is very difficult for them to pay for suvidha fare (esp later slabs). Result is seats are not getting filled in most of the routes.
In airlines there are fewer seats and they operate from big cities where significant number of citizens have high incomes and are in a position to shell out fat premium, occupancy of seats is ensured.
Where as in Indian railways, a large number of seats are there and the number of passengers who can shell out a fat premium are very much less, hence occupancy of seats is very poor. Many a time such trains have gone with single digit occupancy! Much more passengers could have been carried and much more revenue could have been generated had these trains been run with normal fare. Such fare structure many times leads to criminal loss of national resources and denial of service to citizens. Many times these trains run late, without proper arrangement of food, with poor coaches and fares charged for even second class sleeper is of the order of air fare!
Airlines are smart, they take dynamic decisions, they do upscale as well as down scale price revisions as per need of situation to maximize occupancy/revenue.In contrast Indian railways policy making is an extremely slow process. Indian railways in present structure must not imitate airlines, as if later are leopard, then the former are elephant. Same marketing policy shall seldom suit both.
For Middle/ lower class passengers trains are the only option for traveling. They cannot afford airfare and they also do not own car suitable for comfortable & long journey. Left with no other option, they have to pay through nose for the “(A)Suvidha” journey. Most of them defer/cancel their journey and some going for emergency purposes only succumb to sky-high fares. High class people, who are habitual of flying, immediately switch to airlines if they fall in the trap of higher Suvidha slab.
This is not a good policy to charge peanuts for lower class travel (general) as compared to other equivalent modes like buses and charge exorbitantly high Suvidha Fares for middle class people (Most of the coaches in Suvidha are ACIII 2nd class sleeper) to make up for the loss and leave aside the high class (ACI, to some extent AC2). Either get direct compensation from Govt of India to serve poor or lock the bull by horns i.e. increase fares (not been raised for 10 years in a row) which has fallen down to ridiculously low levels.
If the Suvidha policy is necessary for additional revenue, the maximum fare must be much less than present fare and smaller number of seats must be kept in higher slab. (Slabs may be something like 20% higher for first 40% seats, 30% higher for next 20% seats, 40% higher for next 20% seats, 50% higher for next 10% seats, 60% higher for last 10% seats.). Another option can be to charge a fixed premium say 10-15% extra on all classes of all the special trains introduced so that the fares does not become too high and the burden is shared and does not hurt the passengers financially and at the same time substantial revenue can also be collected.