‘Lousiest on God’s Earth’ : For India’s Callers, Phone System Is Wrong Number

Every day for the last several years, cartoonist Enver Ahmed has received at least 20 telephone calls intended for the Punjab National Bank, which has a number that is not even remotely similar to his.

People in New Delhi are accustomed to this sort of thing, but the experience has made Ahmed one of the Indian telephone system’s bitterest critics.

“We never get a day’s rest,” he complained the other day in a telephone interview, and as he talked his voice was obscured by static and overlapping conversations. “This is the lousiest phone system on God’s Earth.”

The phone company is the main target of Ahmed’s comic strip in the Hindustan Times. In fact, the problem-plagued government phone company is the object of more criticism, more complaints and more ridicule than virtually anything else in India.

So there was considerable sympathy the other day for Prakash Chand Sethi, a member of Parliament, who stormed a New Delhi telephone exchange armed with a gun and accompanied by an armed escort. Sethi was furious because he had put in a call to Bombay and several hours later it had not gone through.

“This system,” the Indian manager of a Japanese firm here remarked, “can work only at the point of a gun. I appreciate what (Sethi) did. I am going to write a letter telling him I agree with him.”

Sethi, minister of home affairs in charge of law and order under the late Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, has had emotional problems recently. After challenging the operators at the Kidwai Bhavan central exchange, he reportedly fainted and slumped to the floor. Telephone ministry officials said he had been confused and had given an operator a non-existent number.

Still, several hundred operators went on strike to protest Sethi’s “harassment.” On Monday, after he apologized, they returned to work.

Coming as it did at a time when New Delhi’s telephones are the least dependable, because of the monsoon rains, Sethi’s assault on the system provided good sport for newspapers and magazines here.

India’s telephone service is an inviting target. “Ernestine,” the telephone operator Lily Tomlin created for television’s “Laugh In,” would have a field day in India. In comparison to the Indian system, Ma Bell is Mother Teresa.

Firms Hire a Dialer

The Indian system is so undependable that many business firms keep a boy on the payroll just to wait for the dial tone and try to put a call through. If a desired number is reached, the boy keeps the line open in case someone needs it in the course of the day.

Although there have been some improvements in recent years, particularly in international calls from major Indian cities, many businessmen find it easier to fly the 700 miles from New Delhi to Calcutta than to attempt a phone call.

Even when a call gets through, the result is often no better than what can be achieved with a pair of tin cans on a string. One party may be treated to the sound of his or her own voice, while the other party may hear something akin to the voice of a child trapped in a deep well.

The main problem with the system is the age of the equipment. Many of the instruments are the British Post Office Model 332, which dates back to before World War II. Since 1958, India has manufactured telephones of its own design, including the bulky, heavy “Priyadarshanee,” or “Beautiful Vision.” But the steady demand for new phones prevents the phone company from replacing old units. Many of the switchboards, designed for 25 years of service, are 40 years old.

5-Year Wait for Phone

Only about one Indian home in 250 has a telephone. Applications for service take about five years. More than a million people are on the waiting list.

Meanwhile, the system reaches only a small part of the population. Of India’s 600,000 villages, only 24,000 have telephone service.

When the prime minister travels to a remote place, the telephone company is given a week’s notice. For a 20-minute helicopter visit to a tribal area in Madhya Pradesh, linemen put down about 30 miles of cable so that the prime minister and his staff could telephone New Delhi.

This special treatment for VIPs is a bane of the system. A bureaucrat’s status in this country is often measured by the number of phones on his desk. It is considered perfectly proper to interrupt a meeting to take a phone call. It is not uncommon to find an Indian politician speaking simultaneously into two phones.

Despite the problems, the Indian telephone system does have some positive aspects. It is the most profitable of all the public enterprises in this country. Last year, according to D.K. Sangal, chief secretary at the Ministry of Telecommunications, the system had a net income of about $350 million from revenues of just over $1 billion.

This, he said, is “about the same profit margin as most American companies.”

Bad but Profitable

The magazine India Today, in a cover story on the system, put it somewhat differently: “The truth of the matter is that the world’s worst telephone system is also the world’s most profitable.”

Until last January, the telephone system was run by the same ministry that ran the money-losing postal system, and its profits were used to support the mails. Now the two are separated, and the government recently permitted the Delhi and Bombay branches of the phone system to sell bonds to raise money for improvements. The bonds--the first of them are to go on sale this fall--will pay an interest rate of 14%, and 10% of that will be tax-free.

Moreover, the telephone system has caught the eye of foreign investors, who are encouraged by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi’s relatively open attitude toward foreign investment. Beginning Sept. 5, a U.S. trade delegation that includes senior officers from 12 communications companies, including AT&T;, Southern Bell, Rockwell, Comsat and ITT, will visit India for two weeks to look into direct sales and joint ventures.

Breakdowns Frequent

According to phone company statistics, Indian telephones break down about once every three months. Repairmen are regular visitors at private homes.

Foreign residents quickly become accustomed to visits from smiling repairmen on the holidays--Hindu holidays, Muslim holidays, even Christian holidays. Holiday tips are a way of life. Failure to tip can result in mysteriously disrupted service. But overtipping can have drawbacks too, as an American learned after being visited by seven unsolicited repairmen in a single weekend.

As cartoonist Enver Ahmed’s phone buzzes and chimes with callers for the Punjab State Bank, the phone company has responded not by dealing with the problem but by publishing what amounts to an anthology of his comic strips.

“You have to have a sense of humor,” said P.K. Roychoudhury, a deputy director of the Ministry of Telecommunications.

Sangal, the ministry chief secretary, agreed. At his office, decorated with photographs of prime ministers and national heroes chatting on the telephone, he showed a visitor another cartoonist attack on the company, this one by The Times of India’s R.K. Laxman.

It shows Prime Minister Gandhi at an exhibition of scientific wonders, peering into a display case that contains a telephone.

“It is a working model,” his guide is explaining.

Sangal said: “The P.M. gave me that one. Of course, I already had it.”