Bibek Debroy: Better service eludes sufferers (BSES)

OFF THE RECORD

I wanted to write a laudatory piece about BSES. But that was not to be. As a citizen of Delhi, a relatively pampered metro, my demands from the government are 24/7 bijli, sadak, pani, something most of India dare not demand.

Thanks to flyovers, roads have improved. Not to speak of the metro. If you don't have water and electricity at home, you can always take to the streets. And the malls.

In Vasant Kunj, reportedly the largest legal residential colony in Asia, water is a perpetual problem. Forget 24/7, you don't get water for the stipulated half an hour a day. We have identified a mall reasonably close.

When water is scarce, we use the toilets in the mall. Or assorted hotels. However, there is a choice about water. There is the unpredictable Delhi Jal Board (DJB) supply.

Ostensibly, there is a meter, although billing has nothing to do with consumption or the meter. The average bill is Rs 200 per month. If there is no piped water and you complain, DJB is supposed to offer water gratis through tankers. Doesn't work.

You won't get DJB-tanker water without paying Rs 25 for 1,000 litres. There are also private tankers at Rs 80 for 1,000 litres. One deduces citizens are prepared to pay at least Rs 500 per month for water, if not more. A higher price is not the issue, if supply improves.

We are BSES territory. BSES Rajdhani to be precise, reportedly better than the other BSES. Has supply improved since privatisation? Had you asked me three months ago, I would have said yes.

Power cuts almost disappeared. But in the last three months, there has been perceptible deterioration. Thefts are indeed an issue. But those are constant, aren't they? Why has there been this deterioration, when the worst of the summer heat is over? Are private distributors spiting us because the hike didn't happen?

Let me give you my experience with BSES a month ago. No power. I decided to ring up and complain, after waiting for one hour in the darkness. I had been given a BSES mobile number earlier. The number was now non-functional.

Resident Welfare Association directories have emergency helpline numbers. But even the recent ones listed old DVB numbers. Non-functional again.

Surely, the BSES bill would have the complaint number. It had information about how and where you should pay. Not about where to complain. Finally,

I got the complaint number from MTNL.

That took me to a gentleman named Arvind Rawat. He was answering the call from a call centre nowhere near Vasant Kunj. All I wanted to know was when power would be back. And he had no idea. It would take him 45 minutes to find out. I wanted to speak to his supervisor. The supervisor didn't have a phone.

But he would convey my message to the supervisor and the supervisor would ring me back in five minutes. No such call materialised. Two years ago, I would have ascribed this to the legacy of inherited DVB personnel.

That can hardly be an excuse today. Which brings me to this month. No power again. "Have you checked the mail?" said my wife, meaning snail mail. I hadn't. Fishing for a candle and opening a letter-box in the dark aren't designed to improve your temper.

Nor do you brighten up when you find that the only mail is a BSES bill and your bill is more than double what it was last time. However, BSES has now woken up to the requirement of complaint numbers being listed on the bill. I rang up and spoke to a clone of Arvind Rawat's. No, he had no idea when the power would be back. If I rang up in half an hour, he would tell me.

But this time, the bill also had telephone numbers of business managers/commercial officers. The commercial officer's (for Vasant Kunj) number was turned off. But I got the business manager for Vasant Kunj""Susheem Pandey. If I rang up in five minutes, he would tell me what was wrong.

"The Transco has turned off power," he explained, when I rang back. As a consumer, I was not bothered about problems between transmission and distribution companies. This sounded to me like passing the buck, not different from the DVB days.

Why couldn't Arvind Rawat's clone tell me this? "I can't answer that," said Pandey. "I only look after commercial operations. You will have to talk to ..." For I moment, I thought he said Mrs Dikshit, meaning Sheila Dikshit. But no, he had some other Dikshit in mind. I didn't pursue this further.

However, I wrote out a laudatory piece on BSES. After all, newspapers reported BSES had become more conscious about consumer complaint redress. This recognition may have taken two years. However, that's the time it takes elephants (both African and Indian) to deliver.

Unfortunately, that piece got deleted from the computer. The power went again and it hadn't been saved. On average, our power goes thrice a day. We are back to the DVB days. But pay twice as much.