A small news item “Mobile service providers to fight corruption” might have gone unnoticed by most of us, but that is what I call the power of telephony. The news said that mobile operators in Mumbai have partnered with the Anti-Corruption Bureau to fight corruption in government offices. As per this plan, service providers will send messages to millions of users, giving them contact details in case they come across corrupt officials and practices in government offices.

This is a great step toward the empowerment of the masses. So far we have seen mobile phones being used to book tickets, check bank balance, or search the net. I would term most of these as business applications for the urban population, though no less useful. However, this new facility where a common man, even in smaller towns and villages, can complain to the authorities about government servants who ask for bribes, will be a big milestone.

With a few clicks, the aggrieved person will at least be able to report about a small-time office clerk, who makes life miserable and humiliating for the common Indian people. Without this facility, the person would have to first find out who to lodge a complaint with, go to his or her office, make the complain, and then get it registered. The text message approach will also ensure that the complaint is actually registered.

Ibrahim Ahmed

Obviously, the next step will be to ensure that action is taken on these complains and common people find the service effective. It might not be a bad idea if the service provider can also compile all the complaint records and send a summary to even higher authorities like the home secretary of that particular state government, or the CVC at the center. Today, IT systems today allow these little features in telecom networks.

Beyond metros and large cities, one has often heard about the emergency contact number 100 being not too useful. Either nobody picks up the call, or it does not go through at all. And not getting any response in an emergency, like an accident or a robbery, is a complete failure of all the technical advances that Indian telecom boasts of.

If telecom operators can work out some solutions with all relevant authorities that the common man has to take recourse to-police, fire, courts, water, and electricity, to name a few-it will be a great service. This will be a real telecom application, an actual empowerment of the people. It will even bring lots of goodwill, for which operators are spending millions of bucks.