No one would have expected this. It was known that Indians are very irritated with the number of unwanted calls they get from tele-marketers, and hence most people welcomed the setting up a National Do Not Call Registry, but this would have been most unexpected. When the registry opened on September 5, 2007, it got 5 million users. This is an incredible number and demonstrates how much people are willing to go to avoid these unwanted calls.

The sheer numbers — around 2.5% of India’s over 190 million mobile subscribers — reveal just how much people resent pesky sales calls. Considering that prepaid subscribers — who are much less of a target for telemarketers — form a huge percentage of all subscribers, this figure of 5 million assumes even greater significance.
The sheer numbers — around 2.5% of India’s over 190 million mobile subscribers — reveal just how much people resent pesky sales calls. Considering that prepaid subscribers — who are much less of a target for telemarketers — form a huge percentage of all subscribers, this figure of 5 million assumes even greater significance.

The website of the Registry is available at this link.
The NDNC Registry will be a data base having the list of all telephone numbers of the subscribers who do not want to receive UCC.After the establishment of NDNC registry, Telephone subscriber (Landline or mobile) who does not wish to receive UCC, can register their telephone number with their telecom service provider for inclusion in the NDNC. Telecom Service Provider shall upload the telephone number to the NDNC within 45 days of receipt. The Telemarketer will have to verify their calling telephone numbers list with the NDNC registry before making a call.An amount of Rs 500/- per call/message has been prescribed to discourage telemarketers who make calls to numbers registered in Do Not Call list. The defaulter telemarketer will face disconnection of telecom service.

Individual DNC numbers for different services
Airtel (link)
Hutch (link)
Reliance (link)
BSNL (link)
Idea (link)

Shocking, isn’t it. Kids go to a fair to enjoy and have a good time, and due to non-regular maintenance, the ride simply collapses on the kids. Not only did this cause injuries to the kids and some adults, it would have shocking; at least for a couple of the kids, it will make it much more difficult for them to go to another fair and have the same amount of excitement for a Ferris Wheel again. The biggest issue is that there does not seem to be any kind of checks and balances for a fair like this, once the fair holders have permission to hold a fair, there is no check whatsoever about whether the machines are okay, have proper maintenance, and so on:

They were there for sheer fun, but a ride on the Ferris wheel turned out to be a traumatic experience for about 12 children and at least three adults, who suffered minor injuries when most of the wheel simply collapsed while in motion.
Although the organisers had the requisite permission to conduct the fair, they had not taken adequate precautions which led to the accident. Sources said the arms of the wheel came loose while in motion. “This could have happened as the nuts keeping the arms attached to the main body came loose,” an eye-witness remarked.

In can be argued that this was simply an accident, but that is not a correct argument. It is only when we are in a relaxed environment, unworried about things such as inspections of facilities, that people can take short-cuts, and either get shoddy maintenance done or no maintenance at all. There is no worry that they can be fined or otherwise held responsible for their doings. Another example is when you go to a ill-maintained building, then there is a fear that lifts in the building have not had proper maintenance, and we have all learned to live with such fears rather than trying to do something about it.

Getting unsolicited calls all the time, and not sure how to stop them? Getting a number of SMS selling stuff that you are not interested in? Felt hopeless at not being able to stop them ? Well, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India has come out with a regulation that should help you.
TRAI has directed the National Informatics Center (NIC) to set up a National Do not Call Registry (NDNC) that will contain a list of numbers (telecom subscribers) who do not want to receive unsolicited commercial communications. This includes both calls and SMS.
Once this registry gets operational, both landline and cellular subscribers who do want to receive unwanted SMS and calls can place their numbers on a list, and telemarketers will have to check this list before making a call or sending a message. If they violate this, they will charged Rs. 500 per violation, and on repeated violations, can have their numbers disconnected.
This does not apply to situations where the SMS or call is from a place with which the consumer already has some sort of contract, for example, a bank with which you already have a relationship.

Around a month back, ICICIDirect started sending me messages on my cell phone regarding its IPO tips. And not once, but in duplicate or triplicate. Now, I really don’t depend on ICICIdirect for my IPO tips, and in fact, I don’t invest in IPO’s. But I do have an account in ICICIDirect for investing in the secondary market. And given that this is related to money, I have given my cell number to them so that in any emergency, I can be contacted. Big mistake.
No doubt, somebody in their marketing department would have a brainwave about helping their customers by sending them free IPO information. Or it could be that since other brokerages provide such information, they felt competitive pressure.
Anyhow, I had not requested any such service, and it gets fairly irritating to receive 5 such SMS in a day (and if you are travelling, you would be charged with the roaming charges for receiving such SMS as well). So off I went to the ICICIdirect customer site to reverse this; and wonders, they did not have a section where SMS message sending could be discontinued. Now, I did not want to remove my cell number from there, but wanted to see how I could cover this. So, after some more poking around the site, it was clear that I could not file a request from there.
So I wrote a letter to helpdesk@icicidirect.com to get my request implemented. A couple of days later, I received a reply where they suggested that it would be helpful for me to keep this service on since it was a free service, but since I had made a request, they would do it. Okay, this is not so bad, maybe they are good on customer service after all inspite of all that I had heard.
And this was fine, I did not get another SMS, and I was happy. Then, day before, it started again. I have got another SMS of an IPO, and it is crazy. How can they do this ? Don’t they care about what their customer wants? The problem is, there are not too many good services such as ICICIDirect that give a seamless link between trading, demat and savings account, making it a perfect computer service (even though they have very high brokerages).
Now I guess I will have to file another email with customer service to get this repaired, but I am certainly not happy over this. It sounds petty, after all what are a few SMS for giving an information service; but giving it after the customer has declined it is bad, and given that international roaming could make this SMS expensive, it can be pretty bad after all. Customer complaint page for ICICIDirect

So the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India is looking after customers after all. One of the biggest problems faced by mobile users in India right now is the number of calls they get from direct marketers on behalf of banks and other financial instruments. These could be in the nature of loan requests, credit card requests, insurance, and others. Most customers find these calls extemely irritating and keep on getting frustated because they do not see a solution. In addition, they really suffer if they are roaming nationally or internationally and have to suffer roaming charges for these junk calls.
In proposed guidelines, the TRAI proposes to ban banks from using the services of direct sales agents for selling their financial products. Refer this article:

Unsolicited telemarketing calls may soon become history. Under new guidelines on unsolicited commercial calls, telecom regulatory authority of India (TRAI) proposes to forbid banks from using the services of direct sales agents for marketing financial tools. Banking industry accounts for about 90 per cent of the unsolicited calls, according to TRAI estimates. There are about 30,000 direct sales agents appointed by banks and they are not covered by any rules and regulations as they do not have a licence from any government authority.
The new guidelines that regulators would propose this week would make it mandatory for all the banks to use the services of other service providers (OSPs), who are licensed entities and work under the guidelines formulated by the department of telecommunications (DoT).

This is really welcome news for customers. In addition, TRAI envisages maintaining a national Do not Call Registry, and subscribers can register themselves with this DNC registry. All banks and their agents would have to respect the names of people in this registry, and banks would be charged penalties if they violate these rules. This would make India equal to other countries in terms of customer protection, and should bring a sense of relief to customers. In addition, TRAI wants mobile operators to disconnect those subscribers who make unsolicited calls.