« Movie Review: Swades | Main | Vishy's Useless Factoid of the Day #18: Nodding and shaking in Bulgaria »
August 01, 2005
Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: STD booth
STD booth./ESS·TEE·DEE·booth/. At first glance, it may seem a bit like a confession booth-like structure with a skanky ho inside -- your one-stop shop for contracting a sexually transmitted disease. However, sadly, Indians get by transmitting STDs to each other just fine, even without STD booths. STD booths brought about the recent telecom revolution in India. STD stands for Subscriber Trunk Dialing, the official name of national long-distance telephone service in India. Most STD booths also allow you to make international long-distance telephone calls, which are referred to by the abbreviation ISD, short for International Subscriber Dialing. They also offer payphones for ordinary local calls, and thus serve as a Public Call Office (PCO). Thousands of such booths marked with modest signs saying 'STD·ISD·PCO' mushroomed in the Indian countryside in the 90s. They employed several rural youth and were as good as a box marked 'Cash Cow -- just add water'. In part, they fueled the expansion of Internet access to remote areas in rural India.
Before the days of STD, people used to make operator-assisted long-distance calls, which were known simply as Trunk Calls. STD removed a human operator and put the power of trunk dialing in the hands of the subscribers themselves. In recent years, particularly in Mumbai, the telephone authority is trying Ingsoc-like to phase out the abbreviation STD and replace it with NSD (National Subscriber Dialing), the national analogue to ISD. However, STD occupies a special place in most people's minds and is by far the dominant abbreviation used to refer to national long distance. The abbreviation STI (Sexually Transmitted Infection) sometimes comes in handy when distinguishing between the senses of STD.
Posted by Vishy at August 1, 2005 10:16 AM