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Reshuffling portfolios of a caretaker government may be unprecedented, but there are good reasons for the change. With elections still some months away, no government can afford to sit back and do nothing in the interim. Several initiatives had been taken during the last Lok Sabha, the fallout of which has to be tackled. One such decision has been the new telecom policy. Communications minister Jagmohan has proved himself to be a good administrator, and a stickler for the letter of the law. But he lacked vision. And in a field as pregnant with opportunity as telecom, what the country needs is not merely a good bureaucrat, but a man with the foresight to realise the importance of the revolution taking place in the telecommunications sector, and to take immediate advantage of it. Jagmohan, on the contrary, allowed himself to become a prisoner of his bureaucracy, so much so that it was unclear whether he was the minister for communications or the minister for DoT. Shifting him is therefore a good idea, and it isto be hoped that he will learn from his mistakes and keep up the good work done by Ram Jethmalani in the urban development ministry.
On a strictly legal basis, problems abound in the new telecom policy. This is not because the new policy is flawed but because the earlier policy has left a legacy of duopoly, and any change in that could be contested in courts. The issue of licence to new players, for example, would be in contravention of the commitments to existing licensees. It is thorny issues such as these which have resulted in the policy being referred to the attorney general.
But these problems are insurmountable only if viewed from the strictly legal angle. The ministry has to remember that the basic reason for telecom reform is not maximising revenues accruing to the government, nor to protect incumbent monopolies, but to lower the transaction costs in this vital sector. Good telecommunications can compensate to a great extent for other infrastructure problems, such as bad roads. A moderntelecommunications network forms the backbone for the computer software industry. The only aim of policy in this field is to reduce costs. And costs can be reduced only with increased competition. While there is no doubt that companies which had won the licenses on the old duopoly principle will object, especially those companies which have paid up their license fees, a flexible approach could have solved this problem. For instance, a reduction in fees could have been a trade-off for allowing new entrants. After all, hefty fees merely make communications more expensive. It is this attitude of give and take which is essential if we are to get out of the mess that we have made of our telecom policy.
Copyright © 1999 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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