Conversation stopper

Tue, Nov 3 05:59 AM

If Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Jammu and Kashmir was a fresh sentence in a changing conversation, here's something that renders one speechless: the Union home ministry has banned pre-paid cell-phone connections in the state. The abrupt move affects an estimated two lakh people, and could render jobless 10,000 telephone operators. Many of those affected are Kashmiri youth — the precise demographic so susceptible to nihilist angst, precisely those that New Delhi needs so badly. Is this the kind of conversation the Centre wants to start with Kashmiris?

The frail security situation in Kashmir does demand special measures, and they may even work. For instance, the entire senior leadership of the Hizbul Mujahideen was apparently wiped out after their mobile conversations were tracked. But banning pre-paid phone calls is neither here nor there. The ostensible reason is that pre-paid connections require only one document establishing the user's identity, and so are security risks. This is in contrast to the more rigorous checks for post-paid connections. If the problem is that pre-paid connections are easier to get, then surely the answer is to tighten the identity proof requirements. Why not make the identity checks the same as for post-paid numbers? Banning the service itself could be perceived to be ham-handed and excessive. There is no question that security agencies face an immense challenge in tracking communication between militants, and anything that threatens the peace should be carefully assessed. The point, however, is that the case against pre-paid mobile connections needs to be more strongly made for it to be popularly accepted.

When Prime Minister Singh flagged off the first ever train service to Kashmir last week, the aim was to connect Kashmiris to each other, and to the rest of India. The pre-paid ban achieves precisely the opposite. Out of 45 lakh mobile connections in J&K, 39 lakh are pre-paid — for reasons best known to the telecom firms that issue such connections, often consumers perceive advantages of flexibility and economics in pre-paid connections. There is no inherent advantage to pre-paid over post-paid connections. And, importantly, monitoring pre-paid connections need not be any more difficult than tracking post-paid connections.

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