While the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Telecom regulator have formulated rules and No Call Directories (NCD) to stop harassment of people through marketing calls, corporate India remains one jump ahead in dodging these rules. Over the past few weeks, there is a big and renewed spurt in telemarketers offering personal loans. These include telemarketers for Citi Financial, GE Money, Barclays Bank and ICICI Bank — most of these marketers speak in the regional language and seem to target sub-prime borrowers who would be willing to pay interest rates of 40 per cent or more on personal loans that ask no questions on use of money and require no collateral or guarantor. This aggressive round of marketing has been sparked off by the entry of new players (AIG, BNP Paribas, Fullerton India and Societe Generale are looking at this market) in the business with deep pockets that see big profits in the personal loan business. Ironically, personal loans are targeted at people who aren’t really welcome as savings account holders by these banks. The RBI is fully aware of the problem of usurious loan rates charged by finance companies and has even persuaded a couple of them to roll back the high rates, but it has yet to stir itself to cap the charges.

TRAIng conditions

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) is finalising its No Calls Directory rules and even planning a Rs 1,000 fine for telemarketers. In a far-reaching move, it also plans to force all telemarketing companies to be registered, so that it has the power to discipline them for bad business practices. While Trai is focused on telemarketers, mobile phone companies are on to new tricks. Apart from badgering non-subscribers, there is a big resurgence in the old trick of offering a free services, which become chargeable at the end of 30 days through a negative consent —these includes call waiting, missed calls, downloads and answering services. In the last few days, Airtel’s pre-paid subscribers say that a song download facility costing Rs 30 a month was activated without their consent. Some subscribers found to their chagrin that a song was also downloaded (at Rs 15) on their phones without their permission. Trai will clearly have to work faster and harder to ensure that telecom companies follow fair business practices.

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