This column in Business World of 24 September 2004 was about Dayanidhi Maran, who had just opened his innings as central minister; his performance led him eventually to jail.
How to make a mess
The fourteenth Lok Sabha has a
new member: Dayanidhi Maran. The Parliament web site says that his curriculum
vitae is under preparation “and shall be updated” when it is “finalized”. I
thought: what do you expect from our Lok Sabha? It will be a surprise if puts
up the CV before the end of the 14th Lok Sabha. But I also wondered
whether the missing curriculum was the fault of the Parliament secretariat, or
whether Mr Maran’s biodata were still in the making.
Laziness, otherwise known as
government working, must take a large part of responsibility. For even I, who
do not know Dayanidhi Maran from Adam, could have told the LS secretariat that
he is the son of Murasoli and Mallika Maran, grandnephew of M Karunanidhi and
nephew of M K Stalin, married to Priya and has two daughters, Divya and Kavya,
who are still in school, that he did economics in college, graduated 15 years
ago, and has been associated with Sun TV.
This southern TV power house, the
pride of the Karunanidhi clan and envy of Jayalalitha, was started 11 years ago
– soon after the Narasimha Rao government allowed private TV channels. It is a
family venture managed by Kalanidhi, Dayanidhi’s elder brother. It broadcasts
in five south Indian languages. To assuage the parochialities of the south
Indian audiences, it calls itself different things – KTV, Surya, Udaya, Teja,
Ushe, SCV – in different languages. It specializes in filmi and sitcom
programmes, but its comedies can be quite funny – for instance, the one where as
a result of a dubbing mix-up, a filmi hero dances one song but sings quite
another one - imagine the surprise of the heroine.
Although this association with
Sun makes Dayanidhi a household name in Madras, it hardly causes a ripple in
Delhi, where every other auto driver is a celebrity. So Dayanidhi has been
working to extend his CV. On 1 August he inaugurated the SDE Prameela Software
Park in Hyderabad. The speech continued readily available figures about
software exports and that sort of thing; it was obviously written by the joint
secretary. But he also said that instead of registering under common domain
names like .com and .net, Indian firms should register under .in. It is the
kind of thing mindless ministers say and do – like providing Rs 1 billion for
an India brand for instance. But .in is irrelevant. The US has no country
domain. Germany has the largest number of country-specific domain names, but
they are not what makes it famous; it is its engineering prowess, its beers,
its castles that make its name. China has the next highest number of domain
names. But who ever looked up a .cn site? China is known for its sizzling
economy, its manufacturing strength, its glittering cities – not for its .cn
sites.
Whilst his foray into domain
names was harmless, his crusade to help dying public enterprises is petty
political enterprise in the disservice of the nation. He has got Chidambaram to
give Indian Telephone Industries (ITI) a fat subsidy. It is in his charge, and
its managers and patrons from Karnataka, where it is located, must have queued
up to beg for help. But even if one thought that telecommunication equipment
production must be encouraged, ITI is the last enterprise to put the nation’s
money in. Nokia is the world’s biggest mobile maker; it buys a lot of Indian
software; and it is in trouble. The country would get a much bigger dividend if
Nokia was persuaded to take over the ITI real estate and build any productive
enterprise it liked – without having to take ITI’s feckless employees.
ITI is too far gone; it has been
neglected for 15 years, and technology as well as production in India have
moved on too far. But BSNL and MTNL can be saved – only if Dayanidhi does not
have his way. For they need to be privatized. They face lively private
competition. Reliance has laid thousands of miles of optic fibre, and is now
beginning to provide telephones with last-mile copper wire all over the
country, and giving many payment options. MTNL is already losing customers;
BSNL will soon. They are giving a cheap mobile service; but as their profits
decline, their ability to offer cut prices too will. They need enterprise,
ideas, and capital – quickly. If they do not, the government will force TRAI to
give them ever bigger cross-subsidies, and mess up the entire telephone system.
Dayanidhi should learn some telecommunications economics fast, for the cost of
his delay will run into trillions.
