Come 2017 and the women in India will find an inbuilt feature in their mobile handsets that will enable them to make an emergency call just by pressing a button. In addition to this, by 2018, every handset will have an inbuilt GPS system too, which is now limited to smartphones only.
The official notification dated 22 April mentions, “With effect from 1 January, 2017, no mobile phone handset manufacturing company shall sell mobile phones in India without the facility of a panic button. Pressing the ‘Numeric key 5’ or ‘Numeric key 9’ will facilitate the user to invoke an emergency call.” And the smartphones will also have a similar emergency call button facility. Either this button, when pressed for a long time, or the existing power button, when pressed thrice in quick succession, will invoke the emergency call.
The notification also said, “With effect from 1 January, 2018, no mobile phone handset manufacturing company shall sell a new mobile phone handset in India without the facility of location identification through Satellite based GPS.”
Mobile phones have become an indispensable part of our lives today and using them for safety purposes makes a great deal of sense. Already there are many mobile applications that provide a panic button-like facility, but the initiative coming from the Indian government itself shows its concern to ensure a secure atmosphere for women in the country. As the Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, said in a statement, “Technology is solely meant to make human life better and what better than using it for the security of women.” With the government’s evident inclination in this direction, we seem to have moved one step closer to realizing our dream of a free, secure and crime free environment for the Indian woman.
News Source: Huffington Post
Image Source: itwofs.com
