Skip to main content

The PSUs are getting efficient

One (of the many) thing(s) I can lay claim to is that a liberalized India and I were born within a year of each other. So, I have seen, since I can remember, the true growth of the private sector and the IT revolution in India.

I have also seen a remarkable change in the public sector.

When I was a child, I remember about the various public sector enterprises and how hopelessly inefficient they were. I remember of the times when trains used to be late by 6-12 hours, I remember the times when you could not get a telephone line without greasing someone's palm. I remember the times when a private enterprise was considered very efficient.

Not any more. The public sector has become extremely efficient. People may disagree and point out many flaws with the public sector, but I sure can find an equivalent number of faults with the private sector. At the same time, the private sector, through complacency or the sheer lack of motivation steadily declined.

There were some interactions that I have had with different government offices in the past few years. I had to get my driver's license made. The driving test went off smoothly without any delays. I was told that my license would be ready in 3 days, and three days it was.

I use MTNL broadband, as do many in Mumbai. I believe that they have the cheapest broadband rates and the best quality in the city. Similarly, I use MTNL 3G on my mobile. During the course of my interactions with the people working in MTNL, I have noticed a remarkable change from what I had observed in my early childhood. Gone is the earlier attitude of the employees. They have embraced the consumer is king motto absolutely. A call to customer care never goes with the long hold times characteristic of the other service providers. Any complaint is promptly dealt with. The rates for various services are the lowest.

Contrast this with AirTel, which I possessed previously. A simple call to customer care to complain about their lousy network coverage would result in me being charged. That sure is no way to show that you have the lowest complaints amongst competitors!

With mobile number portability coming up, private players are spending large amounts of money on advertising. However, I see that MTNL has decided to remain silent. As they say Good wine needs no bush.

Adam Smith's Invisible Hand sure seems to work well.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

On Harry Potter and why I dislike the series

There could not be a better time for this post. There could not have been a worse time for this post. Now that the penultimate movie of the series is out, and my facebook wall filled with people who loved the movie. But this is something I really wanted to say, and I shall say it anyway. Harry Potter is pathetic literature. Now, you must be wondering why I say that. There are many reasons. Firstly, the storyline itself is flawed. When a writer sits down to write anything, he/she must set up some essential rules about what is happening. These rules must remain constant irrespective of how many times he/she changes his/her mind. This is so that the readers are allowed to have some sensibility in what they are reading. In the fourth book, Rowling goes ahead and kills Cedric. Then, at the end of the book, the horseless carriages are there again. Nothing special. We all knew that they are horseless. But then comes the fifth book, and BAM, the horses are actually winged beasts that only thos...
18 comments
Read more

On the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard

This is a post that I have been meaning to write from quite some time. Long hours spent typing code on my computer left my hands fatigued, and left me with a lot of pain in my wrists and fingers. That is when I decided to use the Dvorak. But I have got the same bad habit as Dr. Watson, to tell a story backwards. Of course, you must be wondering what the Dvorak is. The story of keyboards starts with the invention of the typewriter. Christopher Sholes, the inventor of the typewriter, tried with a two row piano style keyboard. But then, he got into many difficulties with the design. Then he finally settled for a four row design. This was similar to the QWERTY layout that most computers and typewriters today possess. The engineers at Remington, to whom Sholes had presented his design modified the layout a little further, and then the QWERTY was born. As typewriters became popular, people got used to the layout, and started practising touch typing, i.e. typing without looking at the keys...
Post a Comment
Read more

Elements of a Story: The Whispers

I'm compelled to begin each post with a meta. That way, my blog posts seem less like essays or dissertations, and more like diary entries, or web logs. So here goes... I started this blog a little over a year ago. The main purpose of this blog was to experiment with styles of writing, and find an effective outlet for all the subjects I wish to rant about; saving my classmates the agony of having to listen to them. As I wrote this blog, I've experimented with so many styles, and have received comments claiming that my work is a shameless copy greatly inspired by so-and-so author/work. Fact is that I simply chanced upon that style. I read, so obviously, my work shall reflect the styles of those I admire, but I've worked out so many styles without even knowing that they exist, only to be informed of them later. Recently, I've been struck with the seeming absence of whispers as an element of a story. The more I've thought of the subject, the more I've been convince...
10 comments
Read more