India, March 28 -- In the early hours of Thursday, when Steven Fernandes, a 73-year-old Andheri resident, was teetering between life and death, his family was scrambling for an ambulance to rush him to hospital. Fernandes had just suffered a heart attack.

"At 2am, my husband and I were incessantly dialling all the numbers we could find to call an ambulance," said Mohua Gupta, daughter-in-law of the deceased. They first dialed 108, the state emergency response service. The call either did not go through or the number connected to 103, the police helpline.

The family lived just five minutes from a private hospital and 20 minutes from the civic-run Dr R N Cooper Hospital, yet they were unable to get through to either facility on the phone....