Constitutional fanatics!

Whether or not one holds religion to be good, I am sure we all agree that religious fanaticism of any hue is bad, bad, bad.  It is so because religious fanaticism has little to do with religion.  It uses religion as a tool to advance its hideous agenda and its practitioners violate the very core of the religion that they use and also profess to adhere to.

I find something similar happening in the political arena too.  Those who have defiled the political system and democratic institutions by encouraging muscle and money power in politics and looting the treasury, those who have actively suppressed merit for creating vote banks, those who have divided the electorate along all imaginable lines, and also those who probably cannot properly spell the word constitution, have all come together to defend the constitution!  To their mind creating unruly scenes, walking up to the speaker's table and pointing a finger in his face, and also advising him on how to discharge his duties in a tone befitting a terrorist, are all very valid and constitutional means of defending the holy constitution.

And yet we all know that their hearts bleed not for the constitution but for the fruits of power that the public has had the temerity to deny them.  They all profess to be supporting the Lokpal bill, but they want it to be introduced constitutionally.  This will give them enough time to toss it around till it recedes from public memory.  This is the trick that they have been playing for over sixty years and that they would like to perpetuate.  We have all suffered this farce for too long and it is strange that some people still advocate patience and following all the silly rules invented with the sole purpose of browbeating change seekers.

AAP is a ray of hope and we must not let the old guard fool us into thinking that they are the fanatics that we need to guard against.

My experiment with MNP.

When I finally returned to Lucknow after my retirement, I chose Tata Docomo (TD) as my GSM service provider.  It had good coverage in the city, one paisa per second tariff with lifetime validity, and a passable 2G data service.  3G appeared on the scene later on but TD was not in the reckoning in Eastern UP.  Noises about doing away with national roaming came a little later.  Again I found that TDs pan-India coverage was sparse and thus it was not likely to be enthusiastic about it.  This is borne out by its rather expensive roam free plans as compared to other operators. Also, you know how expensive does data become when you are roaming on another operator's network.  With these considerations in mind, I decided to port my number to another operator who offered 3G services in EUP and also had a good pan-India coverage.  I was aware that I was not likely to get one paisa per second call rates with lifetime validity on any other network.  But I nonetheless decided in favor of porting.  After all, what is the fun of having a good Android phone unless you have 3G connectivity?

I decided to port the number to Vodafone.  After a couple of visits to their outlet I could make out that they were not enthusiastic about porting in a number under prepaid plans.  While they were willing to carry out the porting immediately under postpaid, their system somehow made it difficult for them to do so under prepaid plans: At least that was the excuse offered to me.

So I decided to go to BSNL.  Their service may not be the best but their coverage certainly is.  And aren't they the pioneers in 3G service in India?  So I went to the nearest Customer Service Center (CSC) located near Bhootnath in Indira Nagar.  The girl on the counter advised me to go to the CSC in Mahanagar.  When I insisted, she agreed to accept the application but warned me that it might take much too long as all the staff trained in porting had gone for another training!

So I heeded her advice and headed to Mahanagar.  As soon as I parked the car, I was presented with a parking slip for Rs.20/=.  Once inside I joined the queue on the counter with the legend "Mobile service."  The person behind the counter had an indifferent look that matched my expectations.  He directed me to another person sitting near the entrance with no placard.  This gentleman turned out to be quite helpful and  helped me fill out the requisite forms and got me a new SIM.

A couple of days later I got a message from SancharSoft on my mobile with the TD SIM requesting me to dial 1507 from my number to be ported for the purpose of televerification to activate the number.  I called 1507 from my TD SIM but was told that it was an invalid number.  In the meantime a similar message was received from a sender BA-CYMN requesting me to dial 1507 using my new SIM (from BSNL.)  I inserted the new SIM and there was no network.  Nevertheless I dialed 1507 and got a message saying that I am not registered on the network!

I left the BSNL SIM in the phone and kept looking for the network to appear but to no avail.  Also I configured call forwarding on my TD SIM.  All calls were to be forwarded to my alternate Airtel number.  After a day I received a call forwarded from my TD SIM and was told that it was for televerification.  By the time the caller got to the third question, the call was disconnected: I had run out of balance on my TD SIM!  I tried calling back the number but there was no response.  I put the TD SIM back in my phone.

 Finally I decided to visit BSNL once again undeterred by the stiff parking fee of Rs.20/=.  The helpful gentleman at the desk near the entrance consulted his register and said that order number so and so has been passed on this date by BSNL and TD should have stopped the service by now.  He advised me to get in touch with TD and assured me that this was no internal order but a computer generated one conveyed to TD.  I sent a mail to TD who told me that though I had generated an Unique Porting Code (UPC) on such and such date, they had not received any request from any operator for porting out the number till date and asked me to get in touch with the recipient service provider.  Needless to add that in my case TD was the donor network and BSNL the recipient network.

Next I found out customer service / complaint email ids of BSNL and sent a mail to them.  Surprisingly, I got a call on my alternate number soon enough.  After some buck passing and talking to a couple of persons, I was assured that they will look into the matter and perhaps the fault lay with the donor who was acting up.  This was followed by another call for televerification.  Fortunately I had the TD SIM live in my phone or else this call would have gone to my voice mailbox for want of balance.  Televerfication was completed and I was told that I should find myself on BSNL network in 6 day's time.  They didn't attach much importance to my reminder that a week was already over since the date of application.

I reverted to TD.  After sometime a poorly drafted SMS landed on my TD number reading "Your prepay to postpay request is cancelled due to MNP port out request is initiated by you."  I was surprised and wrote to TD saying that I had made no request for change to postpay and again requested them to expedite the porting.  After sometime I received a call from TD saying that my MNP request has been cancelled by them at my request!!  When I raised my voice to tell the caller that this was a lie and I had not withdrawn my MNP request, she advised me to go through the whole MNP process afresh.  I told the lady that this was outrageous and unless porting was carried out immediately I was going to report the matter to regulators.  I followed this up with a mail and got a response advising me to bear with them!  I escalated the matter to the appellate authority at TD.  He responded the next day saying that requisite documents from recipient network had been received only a recently, a week after initiation of the process by me, and that the number will be ported out after 5 days in accordance with the rules!!  This was followed by gobbledygook trumpeting their dedication to customer service.

I am now on the third day of the five day cooling down period.  TD service is running and I am hoping to get the BSNL signal two days down the line.  And this is the 11th day since I submitted my request for porting.

Wish me good luck!