Articles
Digitalization in India – True Facts
Dt:24/5/21
Digitalization in India – True Facts
Dr T H Chowdary*
On the 21st , of May the death anniversary of Rajiv Gandhi, a number of Congress leaders paid tribute to him and asserted that the digitalization that is, the extensive use of information technology in India is the gift of Rajiv Gandhi . It is as well to know the real facts . The following two fair observations of very wise men are apt to be recalled .
· Success has many fathers; failure is an orphan .
· There may be several factor for conception but there could be only one cause ( this observation was made by a judge in the US who awarded the patent for the invention of telephone to Alexander Graham Bell rejecting several others claims
2. Both these great words are relevant to recall. The true facts about the extensive use of IT and digitalization in our country must be known. As one involved since 1967, in all the processes that have lead to the extensive digitalization of numerous activities of governments , businesses, educational institutions, and activists ( aandolan jeevis), I venture to state the following facts that are principally responsible for India’s digitalization achievements .
3. For extensive use of IT and digitalization of every type of information, it is necessary that we have a nation-wide, broadband telecommunications infrastructure and information instruments like laptops, smart telephones all affordable even by poor people. Structural reforms in the regime for the telecommunications are essential. The monopoly of the government Department of Telecoms (DOT) had to be ended; new technologies and services are
to be launched and lakhs of crores of rupees investment is to be brought into the sector and competition and innovation had to be fostered. This is a long process. The country was struck up with Nehruvian socialism which envisaged that the commanding heights of the economy and services (including telecommunications ) should be occupied by government entities only. Unless the grip of Nehruvian socialism as an ideology on government’s economic and industrial policies is deftly loosened, there could be no regime change in telecoms.
4. Sri P.V Narasimha Rao as the Prime Minister of India during 1991-96 heading a minority government (which he deftly converted into a majority ) gave up Nehruvian socialism and launched the liberalization of the Indian economy. Heeding to sage advice, he put an end to the permit- license- quota raj. He allowed two private telephone companies (P-Telcos) in each metropolitan city ( Mumbai, Delhi, Calcutta and Chennai) to launch cellular mobile telephone services. This was inspite of severe opposition from militant unions in the DOT and a diehard socialists and communists. He followed it up by proclaiming the National Telecom Policy in 1994 ( NTP -1994) which permitted P-Telcos to provide many types of telephone and information services. The DOT remained as policy-maker, licensor, regulator and competitor to the P-Telcos. In this multiple roles, DOT imposed many obnoxious conditions on the fledging P-Telcos. All over India, a number of P-Telcos got licenses to provide not only telephone but a variety of services like radio paging, video conferencing etc. This was a very great beginning though with imperfect in license conditions for competition.
5. The P-Telcos found to their great dismay that the conditions imposed by the policy maker -licensor -competitor-regulator that is the DOT were crippling them . There were many other services which were becoming available all over the world but not get introduced in India. Prime Minister ( 1998-2004) Sri Atal Behari Vajpayi was faced with this problem of the P-Telcos’ inability to roll out services because of the impossible conditions . He appointed the Prime Minister’s National Task Force on IT & Software with known liberalizers ( like me ) as members . This Task Force made 108 recommendations which were accepted immediately and resulted in the removal of the obnoxious conditions in the licences and opened up free for all competition , with statutory regulation - the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) . Sri Vajpayi corporatized the telecom services provided by DOT as Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and created a level playing field between the P-Telcos and the government- owned BSNL/ MTNL and allowed the latter two companies to offer every type of service and construct necessary infrastructures. Sri Vajpayi announced the new National Telecom Policy in 1999 (NTP-‘99) .
6. It is the work of these great people, P V Narasimha Rao and Atal Behari Vajpayi that facilitated the huge expansion of telephones and competing infrastructures like broadband, Optical Fiber, terrestrial and submarine cables and satellite based and terrestrial l microwave radio transmission facilities . The result was the birth of 12 P-Telcos , fiercely competing with one another . New technologies brought down costs of new services. Competition brought down prices. In the month of Sept 2010 India set up a world record - 180 mln mobile telephone subscribers were added in that one month . There were just 10 mln land lines for 1000 mln Indians in 1994 . That is one phone for 100 people. Today we have 117 cr mobile phones for 130 cr population - a telephone density of 93 per 100 people. In 1994 when the first NTP was adopted the annual spend of a person having a telephone at Rs. 10,000 was equal to the annual per capita income of Rs. 10,000. Today, the annual Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) at about Rs. 1800 is a seventy seventh ( 77th ) of the PCI of Rs. 1,40,000. That is why the poorest of the poor including many beggars are having a telephone. The smart telephone which is multi-functional connects to the internet . 600 mln Indian people use eh Internet . Working from home, on-line classes, on-line money transfers have all become possible because of the universal affordability of the telephone. The telephone instrument today is a multi -purpose device - sending and receiving e-mails, short messages, facilitates audio video conferences, takes photos , shows directions for travel and so on . This is digitalization.
7. The third person who popularized IT and digitalization is Sri Chandra Babu Naidu during his Chief Ministership of the undivided AP (1997 -2004). Utilizing his clout with the United Front government of Prime Ministers Deve Gouda and I.K Gujral , he got special funds . Under proper advice and the Vision 2020 document, a State-Wide Ara Network (SWAN) was built up in AP linking all the districts for audio and video conference from the Secretariat in Hyderabad. Government services like registration of property transactions , birth and death certificates and such other services were delivered to the public through service centers, e-seva kendras. It was extended upto Thaluka level. The public telephones were upgraded with facilitated bank loans to the attendants to deliver every type of telephone and information service including access to the iIternet from these service centers. Sri Naidu was very thoughtfully and magnanimously made the Co-Chairman of the Vajpayi’s National Task Force for IT and Software.
8. Rajiv Gandhi also contributed for progress towards digitalization but in a small way. His tenure as Prime Minister was just for 5 years of which the latter half witnessed great resentment about it .”Galli galli mein shor hein ; Rajiv Gandhi chore hein” was the war cry the opposition parties raised as the Bofors scam surfaced. What he could do was to separate the telecoms from postal service as Department of Telecoms ( DoT) and set in motion corporatization of its operations beginning with services in Delhi and Bombay as the Mahanagar Telecom Nigam Limited (MTNL) and for international services to another corporation, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL). Corporatization helped MTNL go to the market raise money through bonds for investment in the two telephone systems. The corporatization of the government’s telecom services all over India was completed by Sri Atal Behari Vajpayi who created the BSNL effective from 2 Oct 2000 (that the BSNL as a PSU is not able to compete with the P-Telcos and is now on oxygen. As no PSU can compete and survive and thrive under free competition).
9. Modesty should not prevent me from mentioning the work done by the Center for Telecom Management and Studies (CTMS) which was founded in 1989 by me while I was Chairman and Managing Director of the VSNL. Continuing my private and public campaigns for de-monopolization of telecoms in the country since 1967, the CTMS conducted seminars, workshops and round tables in several cities of the country advocating the de-monopolisation of telecoms and entry of private companies into the service sector and competition and statutory regulation. It ran the monthly journal, “Journal of the CTMS” from 1991 to 2017. I went round the country addressing Chambers of Commers, meeting with political leaders and opinion makers and writing articles and giving talks over radio and TV. Apart from the journal of the CTMS in Economic Times, Economic and Political Weekly(EPW), Seminar, Hindu Business Line, Voice & Data and Eenadu published my articles which were running commentaries on and advocacies for flawless deregulation, just and equitable license conditions.
10. There were other great people from within the government and outside in support of my advocacy. Sri N.Vittal a distinguished IAS officer as Secretary of the DOT , Dr N.Seshagiri, Director General of the National Informatic Center (NIC), Sri Sudhindra Kulkarni, Media Advisor to Sri Atal Behari Vajpai and the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) especially its first DG Sri T.V. Ramachandran were all actors in this long and effective process of demonopolisation and competition. Successive governments hav,e in their own way, taken to digitalization of every government activity . The society is getting informatised . The following dreams and aspirations are being realised:
· Frederic R. Kappel, Chairman of the then world’s largest telephone company AT&T in America addressing an Annual General Body meeting in 1965 said, that, “ in the near future every person born on this planet need not be given a name but be given a telephone number; and if that number is called and there is no answer, we can conclude that the person is dead”. Today almost every person excepting the too old and too young have smart telephones and the telecom network is planet -covering .
· I propagated the slogan, “communicate for work and commute only for pleasure” and illustrated the economics by saying that the energy contained in a tea spoon full of petrol can power a 10 mnts long telephone conversation over 40 kmts for 25 paise while the commutation cost would be several times the cost of that tea spoonful of petrol.
· The regime for telecom service should be changed from “apply apply no reply” to “hath hath mein telephone; gaon gaon mein Internet”.
11. All these aspirations are being realized . The advances in informatization of society are so rapid that we have been having a quick succession of improved technologies – 1G in the 1980s to 2G, 3G, 4G, 5G now and very soon 6G. Each successive generation of new systems has been greatly enhancing the amount of information transmitted /exchanged and reducing the time in which that has become possible. (1,849 words)
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