For most telemarketers in India, someone’s privacy and the right be to left alone ends the day he/she takes up a phone connection. To counter the menace of excessive telemarketing, TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) had started a Do Not Call Registry few months back, but it has been largely unsuccessful in its pursuit – hardly surprising given the lax penalty clause. Quoted from the DNC website: 
“To discourage the telemarketers who make calls to the numbers registered in Do Not Call List, a provision has been made whereby Rs.500/ – shall be payable by the telemarketer to the service provider for every first unsolicited commercial communication (UCC) and Rs.1000/- shall be payable for subsequent UCC. There is a provision for disconnection of the telemarketer telephone number / telecom resource if the UCC is sent even after levy of Rs.500/- & Rs.1000/- tariff.“

Paying Rs.1,500 and having the connection disconnected is hardly a worrisome situation for a telemarketer. Phone connections are easy to get and before you get multiple complaints from people for a specific phone number, a telemarketer could have made thousands of calls from it. Phone operators’ interests are directly aligned with those of the telemarketers (the more calls they make, the more they earn) and getting their whole hearted support to penalize (if disconnection of a phone line can be classified as penalty) them would have always been difficult. 

DoT (Departement of Telecommunication) suggested setting up of a Do Call Registry (DCR) some time back. It proposes to enlist only those people who wish to receive such calls. It doesn’t really sound like a successful proposition, and perhaps thats why it hasn’t seen the light of the day. 

On a related note – I came across this interesting academic article from Ian Ayres, a professor at Yale Law School, who proposes a different approach to solve the problem of intrusive marketing. To quote: 
“Telemarketers don’t bear the full costs of their marketing because they do not compensate recipients for the hassle of, say, being interrupted during dinner.  Telemarketers bear the cost of their speaking, but not of residents’ listening. It can still be privately rational for a telemarketer to disturb 30 people, if he or she can succeed in making a high-profit sale to the 31st. Because of these externalized costs, telemarketers have an incentive to call too often.“
He proposes allowing people/households to choose how much they want to be compensated for receiving telephone calls. A person can choose zero compensation and can be contacted by any telemarketer freely, or he/she can choose an infinite compensation and be not contacted for any solicitation. But, more importantly you can select a value somewhere in between and thereby, control the number of calls that you receive, talk to more (for lack of a better word) genuine telemarketers and be compensated for it. 

There might be operational or even philosophical issues with this idea, but making telemarketers compensate you for all the annoyance they cause, sounds like a good idea to me!

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