I agree this needs more nuance instead of pitching it as a david-vs-goliath. The railways has made steady progress on making it easier to ticket starting with an old mainframe system and transitioning into the web age. Such transitions at the scale of Indian Railways are not to be underestimated and it is not only about a website as real physical trains are involved. They've introduced interim measures to ensure reasonably fair access to seats since they need to cater to a financially spread out populace and there is always someone waiting to make a quick buck out of it. The rate limits are important I think to not overwhelm the system and I do not for a moment believe that IRCTC is working against the people here. I say that from personal experience where one of the IT ops lead personally responded to an email suggestion I sent in (exchange was about 15y ago) to enable people without credit cards to more easily purchase tickets without dealing with long queues at counters.