Union Minister for Communication Sushma Swaraj had just issued orders that telephone users should be greeted with `Vande Mataram' as soon as they picked up the phone. It was time to arouse the patriotic fervour in the people, people should be reminded of the freedom struggle. And it had to be done within 24 hours.

And that was a tall order. Member (Services), Telecom Commission, Pradhan S Saran was made in-charge of Project Vande Mataram. The first reaction was panic. ``No, it just cannot be done,'' was the collective sentiment. But nobody dared tell this to the Minister.

So an SOS was sent to the engineers of the Indian Telephone Industries (ITI), asking them to report immediately. The software had to be modified. There was no time to invite professionals to record `Vande Matram'. So the femaleemployees of the ministry of Communication were summoned. A few of them having a ``good voice'' were short-listed and sent for recording. ``The best among them was selected,'' said an official.

Union Communication Minister Sushma Swaraj said she wanted the telecom department to greet people on the Independence Day in an ``innovative and novel'' method. ``And what better than greeting them with `Vande Mataram', a slogan of our freedom struggle,'' she said.

Telecom officials claim that they did not spend even an additional rupee in introducing the greeting in over 1,000 exchanges. ``We did not touch the exchanges (other than the E-10 B exchanges) which did not have the capability. That is why we have it only in about 35 per cent exchanges all over the country. To introduce it in all the exchanges would have required not only a lot of money but also a brand new software and also some time to prepare,'' he said.

Even in the exchanges where the greeting was finally heard, the ITI engineers workedthrough the night, finishing the technical work. The voice recorded on a simple tape-recorder had to be transferred in a digitalised voice-box. The usual 10-second dial tone had to be erased from the electronic chip. The dial tone was then fed into the lines manually. The recorded two-second greeting was then written over it.

The greeting could not take more than two seconds, because even a fraction more could have caused the exchange to collapse. This perhaps explains the abrupt greeting in many of the exchanges. In fact, the DoT was flooded with complaints that the recorded voice was jarring and did not awaken any nationalistic feelings.