Fifteen years after the advent of mobile phones in India–at a time when the country has the second largest cell phone subscribers in the world–the department of telecommunications (DoT) has woken up to the fact that citizens lack phone etiquette.
In a big-brotherly approach or going back to the era of a mai-baap sarkar, the government has asked the service providers like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone-Essar or Reliance Communications that while providing new phone connections they should, on a mandatory basis, dish out lessons on phone etiquettes. So, subscribers should not be surprised next time they visit a mobile phone outlet when along with a SIM they also get a list of Don’ts.
No need to panic. There’s no punishment for subscribers for not observing the etiquettes. However, DoT will penalize mobile operators if they fail in their solemn duty to teach.
The etiquettes include ‘not clicking photos of people without their consent, especially at swimming pools and gyms and while using the phone in public, making sure that the user moves away from the crowd or speak in a lower volume so that others around are not forced to listen to private or business conversation’.
One wonders what led the DoT to embark on this exercise so late in the day when its hands are full with other more important matters. A DoT official defended saying that the etiquettes were based on the recommendations made by a Rjaya Sabha committee on petition headed by BJP leader Venkaiah Naidu.
The committee, which sprang into action on general complaints about lack of mobile mannerisms like a phone ringing in a temple amid prayers or a freaky song ring tone springing in a creamatorium–surely there was a case for government intervention. After extensively touring the country and interacting with the sagely, the committee sent in its recommendations in March. The government couldn’t act fast as elections came in between.
The good mobile manners tell you to either keep your phones switched off or in silent-vibrator mode in public places like hospitals, temples, burials, planes, trains, auditoriums, cinema halls and other such places.
Loud ring tones are a strict no-no as they are very annoying to the people around.