Pre-paid Mobile Phone Connection: This is how Airtel does it !

To be very frank I used to be an admirer of this company named Airtel, a Bharti Communication venture, which was a sort of pioneering private organization which brought about the telecommunication revolution in India, breaking the monopoly of the Government of India's Department of Telecommunications (DoT). Prior to this revolution, the telephone instrument used to be called the P&T phone, an acronym for the Post and Telecommunication department, and was usually a black ebonite moulding with some electro-mechanical things in it.

Those in the government had made such rules and regulations that it was not even possible for any one to use a phone instrument having a different color. Having a telephone connection at home and office used to be a status symbol which only those well connected could manage. The members of the parliament (MP) had the special privilege of recommending any one a telephone connection! A telephone connection used to cost a few thousands of rupees at a time when the average salary of a government officer was much lesser!

With the opening up of the telecommunication sector by the government of India in the Nineties suddenly proved that India was not a poor country any more as it used to be thought earlier. In just two decades time ever since, India has over a billion telephone connections, an average of a phone for every citizen!

The big crowds that you see any where in any retail shop in India is perhaps in the foreign liquor shops and in the mobile phone shops !

The post paid telephones were the order of the yester years. But now it is the era of the pre-paid mobile or cell phones.

In the telephone business the old P&T is bifurcated into a few PSU companies called the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) which serves on a pan India basis and the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) which takes care of the telecom business of the metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Delhi etc. The arm that dealt the international communication business was made Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) which was later sold out and now owned by the private Tata group.

There are scores of private players in this big business. One of the pioneers was Airtel. Then there are companies called Idea, Vodaphone, Tata Docomo, Aircel, Hutch, Reliance, etc.

Migration of this business from the earlier monopolistic regime to the present open market system has been mired in controversies and corruptions of very high order and the details of which are not very much understood by the common man. 

In the earlier days the DoT officers holding the Indian Telecom Service (ITS) title used to manage this business. Now personnel of varying competencies and calibre manage the show of the private players. Many of the personnel that the telecom companies have in the field offices are employees of franchisees and not direct employees of the companies concerned.

Both in the government sector and in the private sector, it is not very easy for the common man to meet a responsible officer representing these companies. In fact, the responsibility of selling their products and services have been outsourced to such an extent in these companies that the pre-paid mobile connection means purchase of a small electronic chip called the SIM with a unique telephone number which can be inserted to your mobile set for activating the connection by the respective telecom operator company.

India of late is a country where internal warfare of extremist groups sponsored by both internal and external terror groups take place here and there most unexpectedly. Such a situation has made the government pulling its strings to tighten the telecom companies to ensure keeping records of  proper identities of their customers, especially those who are pre-paid mobile connection users. The logic behind such a move is to prevent individuals belonging to the extremists organizations using their pre-paid mobile handsets for their acts anonymously.

So the government rightfully has put the onus on the mobile companies to ensure the identity of the SIM purchasers.

The SIM cards are offered for sale by small time vendors and shops who displays the logos of the telecom companies prominently advertising the SIMs that are available with them for sale.

A customer who wants to get a connection goes to any one of these shops and ask for a SIM of his desired operator of choice. The vendor takes out a set of SIMs well packed with the connection number displayed outside the cover.

The customer selects his SIM. He has to then fill up an application form which is available with the vendor. For his convenience, he only has to sign at one or two places, and the vendor or his agent does the remaining filling up for him later. That is fine for the purchaser, because he should be well educated to get it filled up by himself. More over the shop from where he has purchased the SIM does not have such facilities for the purchaser to sit down conveniently and fill up the form!

Together with the application form, the customer has to give self signed photocopies of an identity proof document. There is a big list of such documents which are accepted as per the directives of the government. How to get an identity proof originally is a thing which is yet to be decided in this country ! Because, any identity document to be made requires providing some other identity proof. Then he has to give a document in proof his address. Now this is a ticklish issue. Many of the documents that he had given for the identity has also some address on them. But those addresses may not be the same located in the place where he is now purchasing the SIM, if he happened to be a person who keeps changing the residences due to his profession.So the address proof has to be a land line telephone bill of the BSNL ( how can he have this because this BSNL will ask for a address proof!) any such thing. But for a person of a changing job nature, none of this can be made without some original address certification by some authority. [In this connection it would be interesting to see these blogs also : 1. The Unique Identity Crisis of India !  2. Unique Identity to All: the Simple Thing to Do ]

Now coming back to my experience of getting a pre-paid mobile connection in Ranchi, the capital city of the meneral rich and Naxal infested Jharkhand state of India. I came to this city nearly an year ago, after staying in the near by state of Chhattisgarh for three decades. My PSU employer wanted my services here now. The company provided me an official mobile connection operated by the PSU telecom company, BSNL. After a couple of months, I thought of having another mobile connection for my private use. So I went to a shop near to my residence, which displayed the logos of many mobile telecom operators. The shop owner told me the mandatory requirements for getting the SIM. I should have an identity proof and and address proof and a photograph.

For the identity part, I had many things with me. I had a passport, a PAN card issued by the Income Tax Department, a driving license issued the Transport Authority of my previous state of residence and my company's photo identity card. Except the PAN card all had my address also recorded, but those addresses were all where I lived before and not my current residence- the current residence at that time being my rented accommodation.

The shop keeper explained that any of the identity proof are okay, but for the residence proof none are acceptable. Then he suggested to have a notarized rent agreement for my rented accommodation. Fortunately I had that and all documents were submitted happily and I was issued the SIM of Airtel.

The SIM costed just about Rs.50. ( approximately one US dollar). Due to the cut throat competition and large scale volumes the connection costed just pea nuts !

So happily I went home with the SIM to be inserted in my new mobile hand set. The shop keeper had told me that the SIM would get activated by the Airtel company after they receive the documents. And I waited for that moment.

To my surprise, nothing happened for some days. I kept enquiring with the shop keeper. At last, after a lapse of about two weeks, he informed me that the company officials did not approve my address proof ! I asked the shop keeper to return my documents. Though he could not give it back, thankfully he returned the Rs.50 that was taken for the SIM. Since the pre-paid mobile connection was not such an important thing for me, I just left the thing there.

After a few months, my employer allotted me my official residence in the company's own township in a prime location in the city, a well known address of its own. Now I had my CPSU company's quarters allotment letter as the proof of residence at last.

With these documents, BSNL was happy to give me a pre-paid SIM which was activated in no time. BSNL being a PSU was now working much more efficiently than the private players. Thanks to the competition that the latter created !

Recently, I thought of having another pre-paid mobile connection. This time I went to the shop owner who got me the BSNL SIM connection. Since I had the BSNL, I thought of trying another operator and opted for Airtel once again forgetting my previous bad experience. At least this time I was pretty confident about the address proof.  I gave him the same kind of documents I gave for getting the BSNL connection !

Fortunately, the connection got activated and I used it for nearly a week. In between I recharged it twice. Then all of a sudden, I got a SMS on the mobile asking to meet my shop owner in connection with the documents. Since the shop was near to my residence I went to him. He casually said to forget it. It is a common practice of this Airtel fellows, he informed.

Then to my surprise, in the next day, the mobile went dead. I approached the shop keeper, my only contact in this connection! This time he gave me back all the documents with an unsigned checklist with a tick mark on the column marked 'un acceptable address proof'. While all the documents had the signature and rubber stamp of the vendor who sold the SIM in the first place with due attestation of the verifications, the checklist returned did not have any such thing. It did not say who is returning the same or on whose behalf. It even did not bear the Airtel logo. Obviously, the company had outsourced this function to some local fellows who are either not competent or arrogant with their whimsical 'power' of deciding who can get an Airtel connection in Jharkhand.

This time I decided to do some research on this. Through google search I came to know that this kind of complaints are frequently happening with Airtel .

Just for a curiosity, I wanted to know how this company disposed their customer complaints.

So I found out their customer care e-mail from the Internet and wrote about this to :
airtelpresence@airtel.in

I had clearly stated all the things regarding this new Airtel Prepaid SIM .

I had given my contact details and all such things that they would need to have a proper enquiry.

The next day a lady contacted me on my cell phone. She talked about the complaint which I had. She seemed understanding the problem.

She was apologetic for the whole incident. But her solution was that I should find out their office located in this city and meet some one there to resolve the issue. Perhaps to listen to their new demands! I do not know.

Having purchased the SIM from the local shop, I did not feel like spending my time and energy again to go in search of some offices of this company for making an argument with their incompetent staff once again to have the connection restored.

When there are many options left to the customers, no one would like to do such a thing.

But had this company cared really for the customer, they would have seen that a legitimate customer is not lost, even if that individual customer is not worth much for them taken solely. That is what customer care is all about.

But for many of the Indian companies, this is what the employees are not taught well.

And after some time of their existence, the employees start making rules of their own, pulling down the company that provided them their bread and butter for some years !

Unless the top brass of the companies take special interest, such things keep happening in all companies, not only with this Airtel.

Before concluding this, I remember how some similar instances of customer grievances that one of the prominent private banking company of India handled. The top management of this bank deliberately chose to be a six sigma company with regard to customer complaints, not just in words, but in action. The effect is that now most of the businessmen for whom banking transactions are very important for sustaining their businesses, chose to be the customers of this bank, for they knew that the bank would solve their problems if at all something wrong happens. In less than a decade, this bank became a consistently profit making venture and the number one in private banking sector in India.

That is the importance of customer care.

But when companies begin to forget it, the stage is set for them to perish !

[View the linked list of all Blogs of the Author Here ]

The Unique Identity Crisis of India !

Being a born citizen of independent India, having a permanent home and a family name I have been under the impression that I am a privileged Indian Citizen, unlike those unfortunate and poor country cousins below the poverty line. A typical middle class way of thinking ! 

Of late, after working in this country in a responsible position for decades, paying substantial contribution to the government by way of income tax, with so many officially certified identity proofs, like official ID card, PAN card, Passport, School and College certificates, Property ownership in at least two states, I am realizing the hard truth. I cannot exercise my franchise to vote to elect my democratic representatives anywhere. Neither I can get a telephone or gas connection, without running from pillar to post and sweating it out! I am not that privileged as I have been thinking!

My profession and job do not allow me to be resident in one place for years. The situation does not allow me to stay in my ancestral home or my own dream home during the good days of my life. That is reserved for the time when probably they label me as a 'senior citizen' and I really do not know what happens then.

My residence keeps changing due to my job.  But, this is the situation with most of those who pay income tax.

Addresses of people keep changing and that is the way of life in the present day society. In olden days, a simple name and a village name could have identified the person. The most important task of establishing the identity of a person used to be done by the most important government officers of the area- the Postman and the Post Master ! The legacy of the governmental system of the good old days of the 'Raj'.

When Raj came into the hands of the commons and the government functions multiplied, some 'wise' neo-rajas arbitrarily decided to dilute some government functions. The Postal Service was the one which was the most efficient and the most non-lucrative for the neo-rajas making them work against it and practically making it eradicated from the scenes. An important government function identifying and linking the people with authority and efficiency thus lost its relevance.

With that started the identity crisis. The security agencies and super statutory authorities working to solve day to day problems slowly and surely made the situation worse and worse over the years with no one ever making concrete efforts to solve the problem.

So what really is the problem ? Imagine the situation of people like me who are forced to change the residences periodically. Except for a few top governmental functionaries, no one really has any officially labelled residence. So students studying in colleges, institutes, salaried persons, business men, house wives all are required to change their residences once in a while. In such cases, how these people will have their voters ID cards when the voter ID card making exercise is done just before some general elections. Which is the authority permanently existing who are responsible for verifying a persons current residence and issuing a residence proof certification, to whom the people can approach and get such a certification before they shift their residence again?

I am sure, there could be some system to resolve such issues. But unfortunately that is not known to the people and to those who are to take note of it. For example, I know now that in some states, where the Naxal problem and insurgency problem exist, the authorities have created such a mess that no genuine person can get a new mobile connection.Similarly, you cannot get a gas connection and cannot even open a bank account. You cannot purchase a vehicle and you cannot purchase a house. And still further, you cannot get a house on rent. From where that most important residential proof document come from ?

At the same time it is extremely easy for those who do not mind bending rules and fabricate documents.

Why can't a citizen with a proven identity and standing cannot certify his own residence? Why there is no system or authorized people to verify and approve such self declarations if need arise?

Why is it that the government makes rules with the only authority capable of making such certifications are the most corrupt and inaccessible officers of certain select departments and not those easily accessible ones?

How can you make a system where the permanent and temporary residence of a person is identifiable and certified for all applications and purposes ?

Is it such a complicated issue that we need to spend billions of rupees and years to work out this Unique Identity (UID) system into practice? If it takes such long time what will happen to those who keep changing their residences just as I have described?

Are they going to remain without and ID and vote for ever ?

Because of all of this, I seriously have a doubt on our published data on percentage voting and census data.

And finally, how will you identify those people who die in hundreds every day in transit and in jungles? Is it like counting the exact number of hairs on your head?

There is a crisis for all right thinking people. For others, there is no crisis. It is only opportunity!

And that makes the Unique Identity Crisis of India!

A crisis created by stupid, but clever neo-Rajas of Independent India! Not that  they do not know how to solve it. But they won't. If they make things so simple for the ruled class how do they get the less fortunate bow before them?

Poor country cousins of India! Let us weep together! 

Do we have some other choice? 

[Reproduced from the Author's Blog at SiliconIndia]

Unique Identity to All: the Simple Thing to Do

Gauging from the many experiments that have been happening in India to identify its citizens in a unique manner, I started feeling that the Indian administrators who belong to the prestigious Indian Administrative Services (IAS) all have decayed brains by the time they come to key decision making positions.

How is it then that in India we have scores of mandatory identity creating systems and cards, each mutually exclusive and mutually dependent at the same time, creating ample opportunities for the citizens to have multiple identities at the same time officially.

Let me elaborate my own case here as a typical example.

My parents gave this name: Rajan C Mathew and that was the name recorded when they got admitted me to my primary school way back in the late nineteen fifties in a village in Kerala state. So that was my official name for all the years I was in that state till I completed my graduation in chemical engineering. All my official certificates bear this name.

My parents, both teachers, probably gave this name thinking that their son should have a unique identity. So, Rajan was my first name, Mathew was my surname (or the name I got from my father) and the middle letter C they thought would make some difference to my name as there was the possibility of having many persons with the name Rajan Mathew. Since there was no law which stated the manner in which one should name a child, no one bothered to ask what the C stand for.

Out of curiosity, I asked my father about the middle letter C in my name when I was in the college. Then he told, the C could be mean many things or nothing, just an identifier in itself. When I insisted, he said it stood for my mother's name or it could be the family name of his forefather. It was not customary to use those long names in the name, so he preferred the single letter and moreover, the name was easy to remember that way. I was impressed and satisfied.

From Kerala, I went to Roorkee for my post graduation. I did not face any problem with my name there too.

Then I got the appointment from one of the leading public sector companies. When I applied for the job, they did not tell any thing about my name and used the same name for correspondence.

Bu they wanted me to execute a bond, made on stamp-paper, that I should serve the company for at least some specified years as a return for my training by the said company, or else I should pay them certain penalty. This bond has to be legally made.

I did not know any one to make this legal bond. Without this bond, the PSU would not admit me as an employee. I was in a fix. Going to my home town in Kerala from Roorkee, the far north of Uttar Pradesh at that time was not that easy. So somehow I thought of visiting my uncle working in a PSU in Gujarat, thinking that he would be the best knowledgeable person in this context.

There with great difficulty, I got the preliminaries for making my first 'bond' deed. There, to my surprise for the first time, the deed writers insisted that my name cannot have a single letter. It has to have a full form, as per the law of land. Obviously, I never knew the existence of such a law, nor my father!

I remember arguing , with all my existing official documents where my name is recorded as Rajan C Mathew, in vein.

There was no use and the 'bond' was to be made for my job. Then I remembered what my father had told about the 'C'. So I told the person concerned the full form of 'C' . That was a true and typical Kerala family name and for the Gujarati lawyer (or legal worker) it was not at all palatable. So insisted for making its simpler so that he could type it in the document without mistakes at many places.

So as an alternative I told my mother's name with the starting C. He agreed and for the first time I got another identity, legally made.

For my PSU employer, that document however, was only for filing and nothing to be used. However, the staff in the computer section of my company shortened my name with the initials R C and I became for the first time came to be known hence forth as RC Mathew and my original name Rajan, became a past history in my work place.

For so many years, it went like that. In between, the computers in my company made me C.Rajan Mathew. That was alright after all, as it as another permutation-combination of my three word name.

The greatest surprise came later, when the Election Commission of India insisted all electorate to compulsorily have the unique identity cards. Great efforts and crores (1Crore=10Million)  of rupees spend and they made and issued the official government Identity card for me with the Government of India emblem and 3D security marks. But the election commission, did not specify the ways in which it should be done and they left the details to the whims and fancies of the IAS officer entrusted with election processes of the state or territory.

Instead of asking the people how they wrote their names, the election commission preferred to assume that all electorate of India are illiterate and they instructed their temporary staff entrusted with the making of the ID cards to write the names of their subjects by asking their names and recording it the way they understood it. So for the first time, the election commission officially made crores of officially stamped cards with new invented names! For instance, they asked my name and recorded it in Hindi and later transliterated the Hindi version to English automatically. So for the first time I got another unique name, entirely different from what my parents could ever imagined. It was now Aar Symethyu ! Yes, it is indeed unique!

Later, the election commission it seemed to realize their folly. So they made new efforts. This time they gave forms to those who knew writing, but those forms when got entered into their computers by not so educated staff, or staff with no fear of reprimand for mistakes, made another set of unique identity cards. I too got another one with no resemblance of my original name.

Then came the effort of the Income Tax authorities. They got their forms filled up by the tax payers with utmost care, but got it entered into computers with people of no care and produced another identity for me.

Then came the Passport, the driving licence and the like. All needed some other Id for making a new Id. Can any one imagine the number of id's a person like me could have officially made?

Yes, that is why I told the brains of IAS is rotting. IAS people are the most brilliant people the government of India selects with ultimate and gruesome selection exercise to man the key positions of administration. If they cannot make a simple system for identifying their citizens and make a simple rule for the same, then who could do it?

Every time they make it, the matter go from simple to complex and bad to worse!

There is also a possibility that the IAS do not do these kind of unimportant jobs at all. If they consider it simple, the most likely outcome would be delegating the work of planning the processes to some lower most in the ranks-the Indian way of delegation of work.

Can the government of India make a simple rule of naming and identifying its citizens like this instead?

Already there are various registration departments and its offices working through out the country. But what is essential in this context is to make one ministry and and sole organization responsible for this entire exercise. In my opinion, the Human Resource Ministry of the Government of India should be the logical custodian and administrator of all aspects governing population studies and records. This ministry should have at least one office in each state and these offices should all be e-enabled  and manned with well qualified personnel. These offices should be vested with the act of registration of all citizens and issue of the Unique Citizen Identity Numbers (UCIN). The UCIN so registered with the HRM offices shall be used by all other departments of the government, like Income Tax, Passport, Election Commission, etc., etc.

All offices of HRM shall have an empowered officer who could authorize corrections in the registered data, in case a citizen applies for corrections with valid reasons. However, the UCIN once registered shall not be changed, though the data may be changed.

Now the UCIN should be linked to all registration offices for data updating like death, birth, marriage, divorce, criminal offenses, etc, etc.

In this age of computers, none of these things are difficult to be implemented. What is needed is a will of the top functionary of the government coupled with his determination to enact or amend the law of the land and appoint competent officers to handle the project. The officers need not be a computer expert, but should be aware of the latest trends in computer usage and a user of computers.

Issue of UCIN cards, I would say, is a sheer waste of time and money. Where will the poor people keep their cards when millions in this country do not have a proper home? After all in the age of Internet, why do you need a card?

Once registered, the system should be in a position to identify a person even if he is not remembering his number. Bio-metric identification by finger or eye scanning could also be incorporated in the UCIN linked data for the individual citizen. In practice, the UCIN once issued should be a unique file number of the citizen and shall store all kinds of information of the citizen concerned from birth to death and may be beyond.

The government should be the custodian of all the above said information and data and the citizen shall have a right to access selected portions of the data through Internet access, using his UCIN. He should also be in a position to access his data by keying in other key information likely to be linked to his data, like date of birth, place of birth, father's name, mother's name, etc.

The UCIN data bank should be a continuously growing system once a UCIN is created. Once the death of the individual is registered, the system should record details of the same. Even, there should be a provision to change this information if need arises. [ There should be provision for error correction always and the reasons and the people concerned with the entry of data also should be recorded]

The registration of UCIN should start from citizens of the upper sections of the society and not from the lower sections. This section of the society should be allowed to enter the registration data online. The project should aim for 25% completion of data in 3 years, another 25% in another 3 years and 99% completion in 10 Years. Rest one percent could be for the floating data.

The UCIN system to be installed and functional more or less in the above said manner is not a difficult thing in today's environment, provided the government is determined and its officers  decide to support it in the right earnestness and not to bulldoze it.

I am compelled to reproduce this suggestion from my website because of the repetition of the follies the government machinery is trying to do under the UID card making exercise being attempted in the banner of yet another 'whimsically' set up authority called the Unique Identity Authority of India (UIDAI) under the chairman ship of a hand picked genius ( handpicked by the PM himself !)from the software industry, not belonging to the IAS. The ID card is named 'Aadhaar' which has already come under criticism and is in the verge of foreclosure !

[Reproduced from the siliconindia blogs of the author]