Government to roll out a single emergency number

   Stuck in a remote area, and need assistance, or simply want to know flights from Mumbai to Delhi, or need to get rid of a dead animal from your colony? Help may be at hand soon. India has kicked off the process to start a single national integrated number, like 911 in United States, 000 in Australia, 999 in UK and 112 in the European Union. 

   Basic services like police, medical emergency, fire, airline & rail enquiry, or municipal helplines will be available through the number, which is yet to be decided. Besides, it will provide citizens direct access to counselling helplines, and government departments like education, health, transport, municipality, public distribution etc. 

   “We have already rolled out a pilot project in five states—Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh,” said a senior government official at the ministry of IT & communications. “Five departments each are connected to a single state number. Based on the learnings of the pilot, we are creating a blueprint for connecting all departments across India, through a national number like the 911 (in US),” he added. 

   The pilot project will be completed by December 31 this year, and blueprint for connecting all India, will be readied thereafter. Such a citizen-centric project was highly needed in India, where not everyone can access the internet for critical service numbers, all the time. Often many municipal and critical health helplines in hospitals, are found unattended. 

Emergency services expert Ravi Krishnan, director at Dial 1298 for ambulance say its a good move. “But it’s imperative for the government to keep non-emergency control rooms separate, lest they block critical calls. About 90% emergency calls are to the police and 8% for ambulances,” he says. Mr Krishnan’s Dial 1298 runs about 500 ambulances in Mumbai, Kerala, Rajasthan and Bihar. India also has 108 service running in about 11 states, used only for ambulance. 

    In US, the emergency service, for instance, operates on the N11 mode, where N stands for any number between two and nine. The number 211, stands for all counselling helplines like suicide prevention, senior citizen helpline, debt counselling, drug addiction helplines etc. The number 311, is used to report broken community links like a damaged pipeline, fire, bad roads, etc. In fact, the US Federal CIO Vivek Kundra has opened 311 project for social networking applications. Now, social applications can be embedded on mobile phones. 

   Community emergencies can be tagged on maps. The 411 is used for directory assistance, while 511 is used for traffic information in US. But the most popular—‘911’ is used as an integrated emergency police, fire and ambulance helpline in both US and Canada. It’s imperative for India to follow such a structured approach towards a national number.

Source: Economic Times