Special Correspondent
Silchar: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s dream of a digitalized India to make the country competitive and technologically advanced in the world and take it to newer heights of success seems to get jarring note from some corners. Barak Valley is one of them where mobile and telephone services often go out of order and the subscribers look helpless as the authorities concerned have no plausible explanation to offer except the stereotype answer, ‘problems are being looked into.’ But, the problem continues with no sign of improvement.
On last Wednesday evening, the mobile and landline services totally collapsed, sending a wave of dismay among the customers, looking for answer. The connectivity with the BSNL hqrs here was also lost and no contact could be established to know what has actually happened. It was not before next morning that the mobile services could be restored to the great relief of the users. Why could not the landline services be restored? Business circles depending on telephones have been greatly inconvenienced.
BSNL runs the monopoly landline services and so it remains unchallenged. Once the private service provider enters the arena, BSNL will be in trouble to hold its subscribers whose number is dwindling. Arup Roy, leading journalist of Karimganj, said, “The border district of Karimganj is faced with chronic erratic services of BSNL. Many have been compelled to switch over to private services.” This is what Kajal Sen, a citizen of Hailakandi has also to say. According to him, if BSNL does not change its go gay approach, day is not far off when it will meet the fate of Cachar Paper Mill.
Landline services were activated around mid day. Strangely enough, private service providers who depend on BSNL apparatus have no problem. When BSNL mobiles went off, Jio, Airtel, Vodafone, and Idea remained undisturbed. Is there any internal sabotage by some elements of the BSNL? General Manager, Bisnod, when asked about the virtual shut down of services, put the blame on batteries being down to give necessary back up. From what he said, one thing is clear there is no or little sense of responsibility among a section of junior officials and staff to ensure batteries are not down. BSNL has tuned into a white elephant with whopping accumulated loss of Rs 15 thousand crore and this continues to increase. The poor services have already compelled a large number of subscribers to opt for private companies. Will BSNL services improve?
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