Hello! It's out of reach

When the print order should account for the total number of existing subscribers and the number of new services expected to be given in a particular year, how can there be a shortage of telephone directories? GOUTAM GHOSH surveys the scene.

IF YOU are one of the minority who do not use mobile phone sets, you would have in the recent or distant past approached a shop with a public phone - at Rs. 2.50 a call. Many shops do not keep the Chennai Telephones directory or would not allow you to use it even if they have.

"We do not keep it anymore because ours was stolen," you hear. Just imagine a break-in late at night only to steal the heavy phone directory. Wasted effort, surely. And more plausibly a far- fetched story. How could a phone-user walk away with the directory in front of the shopkeepers? And doesn't a shoplifter know that the volumes would not fetch enough from a waste paper shop to replace the energy spent in lugging it all the way?

A shop has the sovereign right to deny you access to its copy of the directory, but what if the service provider - Chennai Telephones - denies you a copy which is rightfully yours? You need the directory because most of the numbers have changed (new exchanges and line shifts) and the new numbers have not been entered into the computer to help users dialling 1952 for automated response in English.

Many phone subscribers, who could not get their copy on the designated dates between December 2000 and March 31, 2001, are still going round and round, carrying the deadweight of their last year's copy each time. For instance, Anna Nagar subscribers who had missed the dates were informed through an announcement - a notice in Tamil and misspelt English scrawled shabbily on cardboard and hung on the main gate of the zonal office next to the Anna Nagar East bus stand - that the directory was out of stock and would be available in the first week of March.

Enquiry in March elicited information that the directory would be available in April. In April, the subscribers were told that the directory would be supplied at the office in Kellys. Visits through April, lugging the almost 7-kg directory, were futile because the public relations personnel curtly said, in a dead, metallic voice without a trace of gentleness, that "For further information, please contact the directory office on the third floor".

Imagine carrying the volumes up the stairs only to be asked to "Come next week". Just forget it, if your heart is not as good as it used to be some decades ago.

How can there be a shortage when the print order should account for the existing subscribers and the number of new services expected to be given in a particular financial or calendar year, even with the most conservative expansion plans?

It is impossible for the existing subscribers not to get the copy due to them unless the print order was for a number far less than the total of the existing and expected subscribers, or the directory supplier - M & N Publications - reneged in honouring its commitment.

As it has happened, M & N Publications, the company that supplies the directory, failed to honour its commitment to supply the 6.05 lakh copies of the directory to Chennai Telephones. It has supplied only 4.27 lakh copies, thereby creating an excess demand for 1.78 lakh copies. Senior officials of Chennai Telephones said M&N faced a problem because the price of paper increased sharply.

According to Ms. S. K. Sudha, deputy general manager (operations and planning), Chennai Telephones, there are 9.3 lakh subscribers to Chennai Telephones to date. Which means the shortfall is of 5.03 lakh copies. "Not everyone exchanges the old set for the new. We try to streamline the distribution. The godown is at Guindy and we use pick-up vans for mobile distribution points. We announced the dates and locations through the media," she said. Even if you optimistically presumed that 50 per cent of the remaining subscribers would not claim their copy, still a whopping 2.5 lakh subscribers need the directory but haven't been able to get one.

As the system stands today, you may be a subscriber in Tambaram, but you can get your directory in Perambur - if there is stock. A telecom officer suggested that customers of a particular exchange or a group of exchanges should get their directories at their divisional office and nowhere else. This would rule out pockets of scarcity. "As the bill for a specific month is rubber stamped before giving the directory, it rules out the same customer getting another copy using the same bill," insisted Ms. Sudha. But we are talking of citizens in a nation where many excel in the art of removing indelible ink from the nail of their index fingers to cast more than one vote. So, removing all traces of a rubber stamp is not beyond the realm of possibility.

Since the metropolitan telephone department has chosen to keep the date-missed subscribers on their toes, literally, the unfortunate lot would be better off waiting for the next year's directory (provided one is denied the free copy because one couldn't exchange the old ones for the new set this year) than going again and again, hoping irrationally that the volumes would surely arrive from the press, albeit after months. Trying to contact the officials through telephone is wasted effort because the lines are perpetually busy, and the officials are supposed to be accessible, but only between 2 p.m. and 3 p.m., provided you manage to squeeze past the security cordon on the ground floor.

Privatisation of telecom services does not mean, in terms of casuality, that the quality of services would improve. The abysmal quality of telecom service will remain till the monopoly is throttled; a number of service providers allowed into the field; and there is a fight for financial survival between the players.

Despite the abyss that the monopoly status created and which deepened over the years, there will be many who cannot help reaching out for attention and service - be it a fault repair or a shift of telephone connection or a probe into an inflated telephone bill or replacing a directory - and refuse to read the writing on the wall. But that's another story. As it stands, telephony is an essential service. Maybe you can't accept that, given the reality vis-a-vis your vision of how an essential service should be, but I wonder if you can ignore it.

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