FROM THE TELEGRAPH OF 2 MAY 2006
A dire
prediction
It gives me a
frisson whenever I see a book of mine for the first time. I open the packet,
and there is a book – with my name! The experience is fresh each time because
the last time was so long ago. It was all the more exciting this time because
the cover was mine. The publisher, Sage, made up some cover designs that were
too literal – tangled telephone wires and so on. So I thought I would take a
shot at it. I went out with my Canon Powershot one winter morning, and shot every
subject I could find related to the theme. I took pictures of telephone booths.
One especially, which had boards all around with names of cell phone operators,
shot across a bicycle saddle, looked great. But it too was too literal. Then
there were festoons advertising lifetime connections for Rs 999. But the photos
were insipid – not enough contrast.
The morning
foray was fruitful, but I was not satisfied. I went out again. Then I was
caught. An MTNL transmission tower – base station in telecom lingo – had caught
my fancy; but I felt I had to get a more graphic picture. So I kept going and
taking its pictures. One day, a telephone worker came out. He said that I had
been seen photographing the tower again and again. It was government property,
and if I was seen again, he would have me put behind bars. I asked him who had
told him. He produced a midget standing behind him, and introduced him as a
prominent local businessman. I started telling him about the book; but then I
thought that if I told him what I had written about the government telecom
operator – about how its indispensable 315,000 employees made it allergic to
competition from slimmer, quicker private operators – he would shoot me. So I
beat a retreat.
Finally, three
pictures stood out. One was a blue-grey MTNL telephone box set in foliage, with
a banner – ‘Stick no bills’. It was a nice photo, but rather subdued. Another
was a leafless tree which had just started budding after the cold winter, and
beyond it, the transmission tower. It was a lovely photo with strong lines – a dark
branch rising diagonally against a blue-and-silver early morning sky and
cutting across the transmission tower beyond, framed by bunches of buds. The third
was the same tower seen across a metal grille, competing with three of the
grille’s bars to race to the sky. The red-and-white tower stood out in this
picture because the light was from the side. The tower was not more than a
hundred feet away; but the angle created the illusion that it was miles away.
My favourite was the second, but my Business
World colleagues were not sure. I pinned up all the photos and took a poll;
the last won by a narrow margin, and made the cover.
After The Price of Onions (Penguin), I had
decided not to write any more books. But in 2003 I was struck by a financial
thunderbolt. To restore my finances I signed a contract to write a book on
telecommunications. I had not given it much thought. Bad books are easy to
write; and for a prolific writer like me, pages are not difficult to fill.
Problems arise when a bad conscience steps in. It is disastrous if, after one
has written 100 pages, one begins to wonder whether what one has written is
right, or good enough, or worth writing about. It happened when I wrote The Price of Onions. After I wrote 130
pages, a virus wiped out the entire manuscript. I was devastated. The very
thought of the book depressed me; the thought of rewriting it made me suicidal.
Then one day I thought, let me just write down what I remember. Actually, I
remembered little. But since it was familiar ground, once I started writing,
the fingers just flew; in three months I had finished the book.
This time I
could not afford to give free rein to my conscience, for NCAER had given me two
assistants; keeping them busy created so much work for me. I asked one, Archana
Jaba, to construct a history of all business houses, their telephone companies
and their foreign partners that ever figured on the Indian telecommunications
scene, expecting that she would not come back for a year. She came back in
three months; by then she had such a vast volume of information, and was so
lost in the jungle, that it took me more effort for me to sort things out than
if I had given her a more reasonable assignment. I understand, though, that the
experience was a turning point in her life. She went and joined Shubhashis
Gangopadhyay, threw away her glasses, had a hairdo and fell in love (not with
Shubhashis, compelling as the inference may be). Her career accelerated so much
that I can no longer keep up with her. The other one, Ramneet, was more
reasonable; she just went and married a colleague. And I am a more relaxed man
now.
The masses of
data Ramneet and Archana produced told a story: that 17 business houses were
awarded 49 licences between 1994 and 1999. But they had bid up licence fees
very high in the auctions. Since the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) had
most of the telephone subscribers, the private operators needed to interconnect
with DoT’s network. But DoT made interconnection so expensive that they all
went bankrupt.
They went to
TRAI, the newly created regulator. It saved them for a while, but DoT took TRAI
to court and emasculated it. The businessmen who owned the private operators appealed
to the politicians in power – some say they bribed them – and got a new regime which
strengthened the regulator and replaced licence fees with revenue share. That
made the private operators solvent again.
Then there was a
tremendous consolidation drive; 7 promoters sold off 17 licences, two forfeited
five licences for not paying dues, and 40 new licences were given. Five big private
players emerged – Bharti, Hutchison, Reliance, Escorts and Idea. In 1996 they
had 18 of 42 cellular licences; in 2002 they had 45 of 55.
Then came the
wonder team of Arun Shourie as minister and Pradip Baijal as TRAI chairman.
They would have sorted out the system. But NDA fell. Under UPA, DoT has again
emasculated the regulator, who is no longer regulating interconnection to
ensure operators do not discriminate in favour of calls within their network
and against calls from or to other operators. So the system is disintegrating
into isolated islands. Obstacles to interconnection work in favour of big
operators, and hence create a tendency towards monopoly. If DoT is not restrained,
we will eventually be left with a duopoly. One operator will be BSNL. It can
never fail, since it will always be baled out by the government. The other one
is anybody’s guess.
So what can be
done about it? Unfortunately, I have overrun my word limit; so the answer stays
confined to my book (India’s
Telecommunications Industry: History, Analysis, Diagnosis).
