Railways to provide TTEs with magnifying glasses to avoid physical handling of tickets; Twitter says 'you can never get bored'

How do you ensure social distancing while checking tickets? Why by using a magnifying glass of course!

This rather novel solution was given by the Indian Railways on Friday. As news agency PTI tweeted, "To prevent physical handling of tickets, magnifying glass to be provided so that TTEs can scrutinize details from distance".

This has in turn brought out a slew of jokes from netizens. Many also expressed bafflement as to why the Railways did not make use of QR codes or other digital means.

Others wondered if perhaps the Railways, or PTI had gotten muddled between a magnifying glass and a telescope or binoculars. While out use of magnifying glasses has been somewhat limited, it does not seem to be the most effective device to "scrutinize details from distance".

After all, if you have to lift the glass up close to your eye, or your body close to the ticket that you're trying to see, one assumes that the concept of six feet distance or contact-less interaction is lost. Magnifying glasses thus don't seem to be quite synonymous with social distancing.

"Or they can have something like bar code reader like in malls ... just saying,' commented one Twitter user.

"Yeh log bullet train chalayengay!" jibed another.

"It's called a telescope, not a magnifying glass," commented a third.

Take a look at some of the posts: