Mr. Shashi Tharoor and his BlackBerry

Just read a news item that Mr. Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State in the Indian External Affairs Ministry, was using his BlackBerry inside the aircraft just before the Mumbai Cochin flight about to take off. The air hostess told him to switch it off. He then switched it off. However, while the plane was ascending, other passengers heard his phone ring many times.

When Mumbai Mirror asked him about this, he gave the following reply:

“That is completely false. I was reading emails on my Blackberry, not speaking to anyone. In fact, the phone function was off. When the air hostess asked me to turn it off I did so promptly, as I always do when the plane doors are closed. The phone never rang. I am astonished at the stories people like to tell just to see themselves in the press!”

Mr. Tharoor, even reading email is a no no. Cell phone must be completely switched off. You should know better.

Mr. Tharoor is not some uneducated thug (criminal) who became a Member of Parliament and then a Minister of State. He is highly educated. He worked at the United Nations for a long time. He was Under Secretary General for the UN. He even contested for the post of UN Secretary General and lost. He was elected as an MP from Thiruvananthapuram. Therefore, he should have known better.

But the association with the Indian politicians apparently changed him. Indian politicians think they are above all rules. Why single out politicians? Even movie actors and actresses and sports personalities can be included in this category. We have heard stories about how commercial planes were kept waiting for late arriving VIPs in India. Being a VIP, they may disregard many rules. But when certain acts endanger the lives of many people, even VIPs should obey them. I bet Mr. Tharoor will not have the guts to use his cell phone in an American commercial flight.

Why they don’t allow use of cell phones while in the air? They interfere with the plane’s communication and navigation system. This could cause confusion for the pilot and may lead to disaster.

Additionally, because the calls are made from a very high elevation, the cell phones may be connecting too many towers simultaneously. Cell phones are designed to automatically detect which is receiving the strongest signal and ignore other towers. If many airborne passengers flying over a city use their phones and each of them connect to dozens of towers, the computers controlling the system would be overwhelmed and nobody will be able to talk.

Again, Mr. Tharoor may be telling the truth. And, the newspaper reports are wrong.

While on the subject of cell phone, I want to give an interesting information. In 1981, a world famous consulting company predicted that in the year 2000 only 500,000 people will be using cell phones in the WORLD. Today, in Mumbai city alone more than 500,000 people are using cell phone.

You want to guess how many cell phones are in use in the world today. I don’t know. But in 2005, there were 2 billion cell phone users. In the year 2008 alone, 950 million cell phones were sold in the world.