Similar to Emergency lines ‘911’ in the US and ‘999’ in the UK, India will now have its single emergency number – ‘112’. The inter-ministerial Telecom Commission has given approval to Trai’s recommendations on a single emergency number.

This free of charge number will be extremely helpful during a crisis. When dialed, you will be able to talk to a specially trained call taker where he will request for your location as well as ask you to state which service you are in need to talk to, such as – Fire Service, Ambulance Service, or Police. Later, according to your suggested service and location, he will transfer your call to the concerned department.

Earlier, it was quite an intricate task to remember the host of emergency numbers from ‘100’ for the police, ‘101’ for fire, ‘102’ for an ambulance, 108 for disaster management and so on. However, with the aid of ‘112,’ you can easily get in touch with any disaster center without any hassles. Several other services will also get integrated progressively with ‘112’ in a phased way.

The best thing about the service is that it can be easily reached even when the outgoing facility of SIMs and landlines has been stopped or temporarily suspended. Moreover, a person can avail the ‘112’ service through SMS also. The system will then determine the location of the SMS sender and shares it with the right center.

Since the service is similar to a call center where representatives will get in touch, you will be able to speak with them in your local language. Thus, there will be no language barrier, and you can get the requested service within a short span.

This emergency service can be highly useful, and one should make use of this number whenever needed. It will only help people to save their life. Make sure that you are calm in such situation and listen to the instructions given by the call taker carefully.