Every time the government slips on any major policy issue, the result is a ?scam?; the general response is that it happened because either the relevant sector?s regulator?s views on the issue were not solicited or if solicited, were not acted upon. If the sector happens to be one where there?s no regulator then the solution offered is having one as soon as possible. Implicit in these supposed responses is the assumption that a regulator is independent and often gives the right kind of advice to the government. It is the government that does not act upon the advice in proper letter and spirit and therefore trips. In short: have a regulator, stick to its advice and follow it in letter and spirit, and there won?t be any governance deficit.
Sounds fine in theory, but in practice this happy regulatory story is found wanting. There may be areas and times when it is relevant, but if one goes by the example of the telecom sector, which currently is at the centre of one of the biggest scams of our times, and where there?s a vibrant regulator, the above theory fails badly. Let?s examine a few cases.
Let?s take the first case that involves former telecom minister A Raja and his decision to grant the controversial licences in 2008 by breaking possibly every rule in the rulebook. Raja may have deviated from every established procedure and even tweaked and cherry-picked the Trai recommendations of August 2007 by Nripendra Misra. But the one recommendation he stuck to was not to auction spectrum. While it may be true that Misra subsequently wrote letters regarding the cherry-picking and how the recommendations were to be considered in entirety, the fact is that Misra should have known better because he had also served as DoT secretary.
While recommending that 2G spectrum should not be auctioned, Trai under Misra completely forgot that in 2003 itself the government had decided that all future mobile licences would only be given through a multi-stage bidding. How could a former telecom secretary like Misra have forgotten something so basic?
Talking about the 2003 Trai decision brings us to Pradip Baijal, who was its chairman then and was the architect of the recommendation relating to multi-stage bidding. It was Baijal who, despite giving the recommendations that were subsequently accepted by the Cabinet, deviated from these within weeks when he advised the DoT through a separate letter that a slew of licences be given without conducting auctions.
Coming to more recent times, the decision taken by the current Trai chairman JS Sarma?when he was a member of TDSAT?has also come under adverse comment by the one-man committee headed by Justice Shivraj Patil. It is well known that the controversial licences given by Raja in January 2008 were preceded by granting dual technology licences to Reliance Communications, Tata Teleservices, HFCL and Shyam Tele-Link. These companies were also given the licences and spectrum at 2001 rates without any auction, thus causing losses to the exchequer. In fact, one company was also given in-principle approval for dual technology a day before the policy was announced. However, when the GSM operators challenged the decision in the TDSAT, it upheld the decision. Sarma was one of the members of the TDSAT then who wrote the judgement legalising dual technology.
However, the Patil committee report has found faults with the way dual technology licences were awarded. It used the same 2003 decision of the government to say dual-technology licences were bad in law since they had not been awarded through auctions. Prior to it, even the CAG found the process as arbitrary and non-transparent. A final verdict on the matter is awaited since the CBI is investigating the entire matter under the directions of the Supreme Court but the fact of the matter is that the TDSAT?s decision has not been considered above board. In fact, the decision is also being challenged by the GSM operators in the Supreme Court.
The instances cited above prove that just having a regulator does not solve the problem. Regulators, as a rule, do function more transparently than any administrative ministry concerned. However, there should be proper accountability for their actions, which is missing at present. It is mostly seen that the regulatory body cosies up so much to the minister in office at a particular time that the recommendations are politically tailor-made. This picture-perfect scenario gets disturbed when the minister changes.
?anandita.mankotia@expressindia.com