Quick telephone availability scuttles Tatkal scheme

“Initially we used to get about 30 applications for `Tatkal’ telephones every year, especially from industrialists, big businesses,” said a telecom official, “Now the demand is down to a trickle.”

Perhaps the most important reason for the decline of the `Tatkal Scheme’ is the availability of telephones from private exchanges. There are some 25 such providers inVadodara, who charge Rs 5,000-Rs 6,000 and install telephones in a day or two and within hours in some areas.

“Obviously, people will prefer paying Rs 6,000 for instant connection rather than go for DoT’s `Tatkal Scheme’ which costs Rs 30,000,” said Tushar Bhatia of Hello Communications, a telephone provider.

But DoT Deputy General Manager Mahendrapathi has a different explanation for the change of circumstance: “With large-scale expansion of capacity at almost all the telephone exchanges in the city, we are able to clear waiting lists faster. At some exchanges, such as in Makarpura, people who applied in August have already got telephone connections. And in exchanges serving areas like Gorwa, people who applied in October have got connections.”

Mahendrapathi admits there are delays at exchanges serving busy areas, such as Karelibaug, where people who applied after January 15 haven’t been given telephone connection. “But by January next year, or March, in some areas, we will be able to providetelephone connections on demand with hardly a few days’ wait.”

So does the `Tatkal Scheme’ now exist only on paper? “It was bound to happen as we improved our services, expanded,” said Mahendrapathi. Other officials, too, said that more than the competition from other telephone providers, it was DoT’s own expansion programme and clearance of waiting lists that the `Tatkal Scheme’ lost to.

The officials are not even willing to admit that the far lower cost of telephones from other providers might have worked against the `Tatkal Scheme’. A senior official said, “Even if private exchanges provide instant connection at a lower price, subscribers knows that follow-up on complaints will be better in a government institutions, like ours, rather than in private ones.”

DoT’s competitors would have nothing of that kind of smugness: they said that it was only after their arrival that DoT upgraded its exchanges, dusted the waiting lists, cleared telephone allotments and rendered its own money-makerredundant.