BSNL directory disappears quietly

With the proliferation of search engines,online directories,and dial-a-number websites,the archaic telephone directory has gradually disappeared. The laborious search for a phone number in a thousand pages thick book is now at best a distant memory. The Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) has not printed any directory in the last two-and-half-years.

After being an integral part of everyone’s lives for over 32 years,these directories have now been replaced by a CD containing all the numbers and a reinvented help line —197 — that gets close to 7,000 calls everyday. The BSNL,which used to circulate over a lakh telephone directories about three years ago,has now decided to do away with the directories in June 2007. “Instead we launched the CD that includes all the contact numbers a directory would contain,” said Usha Kher,sub divisional engineer,Directory Section,BSNL. The office then also set up a call center on 197 with 40 executives who now handle the daily deluge of calls as consumers seek information that they would have otherwise have looked up in the directory. “We now print only 3000 directories for internal circulation. Earlier we never charged the customers for directories,today as we produce over 1,500 CDs the customers have to pay Rs 50 for each,” added Kher. The 28 members of the directory department have been shifted to marketing.

While 197 stops working after 7 pm,the consumers have two other toll free numbers— 1,500 and 1,583 —that provide service round the day. Over 120 executives handle the calls in English,Hindi,Marathi,Tamil,Telugu and Kannada and almost all the other major languages in the country. “While some of the employees remember connecting calls of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru,our website today records as many as 10,000 clicks per day. It’s all about making transition with the times,” added Kher.

Many consumers still have a nostalgic attachment to the bulky volumes they carted from the exchange. “Then,a wrong number mentioned in the copy meant that we had to wait for the next edition to come. I remember the last directory I brought was in the year 2000. I still have the same copy with me though I do not use it much,” said 65-year-old Krishnarao Deshpande.