2G and other telecom scams:
India has many inventions to its credit (‘zero’ for example!) and it has been very prosperous during ancient times. However, it faced many setbacks over last couple of thousands years and degraded.
A few hundred years back scientific revolution took place in the world, but India could not be a major stakeholder. In 19th century an industrial revolution took place, India missed that train as well. Perhaps both the times we were functionally not ready to be a part of the revolution.
In late 20th century when IT revolution was taking place in the world, the reins of the country was under a visionary leader, Late Sri Rajiv Gandhi. He sensed the opportunity when no one ever heard or thought of that. He took the initiative. Thereafter they had to built infrastructure and facilities to spread technology to the extent of becoming a revolution.
There were three major options before the country.
1. To go at a slow pace in the hands of public sector undertaking and in a very controlled environment: The sector might not have grown at a pace required to be on the global forefront to reap the benefits of the revolution. We might still have been waiting in a queue to get a mobile phone connection as we waited for landline phone under OYT (own your telephone) and non-OYT schemes until early 90s. Tariff would have be high enough to be a constraints in its mass spread. In this case, we would have almost missed the IT revolution as we missed scientific and industrial revolutions.
2. To invite existing global players: With all transparency and efficiency, this would have been exorbitant. The growth might have been faster, but the cost might have again been constrain in the rapid mass spread of the technology. Further, at the cost of Indian tax payers, global companied would have grown, and home up their capability to implement mega technology projects and benefit their countries in longer run.
3. To encourage indigenous companies for the execution: This definitely needed incentives and facilitation in terms of monitory gains and relaxed policy framework.
It was a wise decision to go for the third option.
There are people who worked with an aim to develop the nation and to benefit from the given incentives. At the same time, as always, there are people who start working to find out loopholes and take advantage. However, both of them help the sector to grow.
The scams in telecom sector, people say, helped companies to get the licenses etc at a lesser rates and also caused loss of revenue to the government. To my view, in a stiff competitive environment, when the companies had to pay less to the government, they charged less from the consumer. That way ultimately the consumer was benefited. Secondly, the lower tariffs definitely helped the user base to grow faster and cross the threshold where it becomes common means of communication. The technology of mobile and landline phone is in existence for quite some time now. The challenge was to make it available for common people at affordable price. That is what they have overcome.
A story is coming to my mind. A security guard one day told the king that he was going to be attached. The king was saved because of the prior information from the guard. The king asked how he came to know. The guard told that he saw that in a dream yesterday night. The king rewarded him and removed from the job. Why? Rewarded for saving the king and the kingdom and removed from the job for sleeping during duty hours.
That is what they have to do. They should thank everyone for being a part of the development of the sector and should also punish those who were indulged into wrong doings. At the same time, they need to keep in mind that their actions are neither retrograde nor vitiate the environment to the extent that people are scared to be a part of our development in the future.
