Articles
Atalji – I.T & Telecoms
Dt: 30/12/24
Atalji – I.T & Telecoms
Dr T.H.Chowdary*
As a great patriot and nationalist leader, a principled politician who boldly propelled Bharat into the ranks of Nuclear Weapon States, who defined and practised Coalition Dharma at the head of a 22-party alliance, who treated opposition parties not as enemies but as competitors for peoples favour to serve them. Sri Attal Behari Bajpayi is being remembered and eulogized in his birth centenary year commenced on 25-12-2024. Atalji’s bold visionary and revolutionary policies in regard to telecommunications and information technology services are as laudable as his accomplishments towards building a prosperous, powerful, intellectual and ethical India fit to be a Jagatguru. It was my pleasure and privilege to assist him in the revolutionary telecom and IT policies and programmes he launched.
2. Soon after heading the government in 1998, he constituted the Prime Minister’s National Task Force on I.T & Software in May 1998. Advaniji and Sri Sudheendra Kulakarni ( PM’s and Advaniji’s Communications Chief and policy counsellor ) called me to suggest who should be in the Task Force. They know my by then three decades -long efforts and campaigns from within the Department of (Posts and) Telecoms (DOT) and in public fora, for de-governmentalizing, corporatizing and demonopolizing telecoms so that Indians can , instead of “apply apply; no reply; no supply” situation for a telephone will have “haath haath mein telephone” ; gaon gaon mein Internet.
3. The Prime Minister’s Task Force of which I was the crusading and leading Member recommended a policy in regard to Internet which is the most liberal anywhere in the world - no license fee, license can be taken for a city, for a state or many of them , they can use wireless to pickup customers and connect to the internet exchange in the USA ( at that time that alone was open to us) using VSATs ( very small aperture telecom satellites) totally bypassing the domestic, government and private networks . Such a policy was hailed even by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) as an ideal one. The Task Force’s 108 recommendations were accepted within four weeks and government orders were issued for their implementation.
4. The private telephone companies ( P-Telcos) which were earlier (1992-94) licensed to provide mobile telephony ( cell phones) were bleeding money because the condition was that they should pay the huge license fee upfront. Whether they had the network or not, customers or not, revenue or not , the capital that they raised by way of loans from banks and equity was going into paying the license fee and not into the construction and expansion of the network. The Center for Telecom Management and Studies (CTMS) which I founded in 1989, spearheaded the campaign for ending government monopoly. We assisted the government to promulgate the first ever National Telecom Policy in 1994 (NTP-1994). We suggested that instead of upfront payment of license fee, government may take a share in the revenue of the Telcos. They should first be allowed to build the networks, gain customers and revenues from which government can take a share. Atalji was aghast ; the opposition parties, especially the communists will accuse him of helping private capitalists, using government money. Our advice was : “ let the chicks grow to be hens; let them lay eggs; we will take some and some may be for the owner” ; let the private companies utilize the money that they are raising through equity and loans from capital markets to construct networks and gain customers and revenues. The accusations of the opposition parties could be compared to poison that was coming out of the amruta manthan Lord Siva held the poison in his throat and allowed the churn to go on till amruta came. So should Atalji deal with the foul accusations of the habitual offenders to the growth of national wealth.
5. Atalji accepted the advice and implemented it . Tthe country saw how the migration of the private telephone companies from upfront payment of the license fee to revenue sharing has helped the companies to extend the network quickly and get revenues and start paying the prescribed part of them to the government. That was a major decision of Atal ji in a bold way . The result is for everybody to see how fast the cell phone revolution unfolded in India. We have 85 telephones for 100 people; even the “poor” hold a cell phone !
6. Yet one more bold decision that Atalji took was to corporatize that is, constitute the telecom services provided by the DOT into a state- owned company , the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) . He was advised to call a conference of all Chief Ministers of states to deliberate upon this issue . Ground was prepared as to how this decision would be announced. This decision already taken could be made public in the Chief Ministers conference. On the 15th of July 2000, the Chief Ministers conference was held in Delhi only to deliberate what to do with the telecom services offered by the DOT especially in view of it being the licensor, the regulator and operator in competition with the private companies. This was an unfair situation. A power point presentation was made by Sri Chandra Babu Naidu , the Chief Minister of AP as to what is happening, what is not fair and what should be done . In AP a number of government services were already being delivered on state- wide telecom network of leased capacity. After the comprehensive presentation was over, Sri Jyoti Basu and Karunanidhi the Chief Ministers of West Bengal and Tamil Nadu respectively made a blistering attack on the DOT . At the end, Atalji as preplanned, made the announcement that in order to improve the situation he has decided to constitute the DOT’s telecom services into a government-owned company, the BSNL with effective from Oct 2000 and immediately left the conference. The Minister for Communications and the Secretary of the Department were not told before . They were surprised. This course of action was proposed to Atalji and accepted . We advised him that if he stayed on, there would be so many comments and the CMs would ask for constitution of a committee to discuss the corporatization issue. If a committee was constituted, its deliberation would be interminable and the conclusion we wanted would not be coming. That is why this stunning action of the Prime Minister announcing his decision and leaving no room for criticism, leaving the conference. Further actions were taken rapidly and BSNL became operational on the announced date. For ensuring a level- playing field as between the private, companies and the public sector BSNL, the TRAI was constituted in 1997 . Later in the year 2000 Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT) was constituted so that the disputes between the Telcos on the one hand and the government and Telcos on the other hand could be settled.
7. With these bold decisions a level- playing field as well as a regime in which Telcos can raise the capital needed and spread the network, gain customers and share it with the government was created . The cleaned up regime for telecoms, helped the networks to cover the entire country so that I.T and software companies offer their services from anywhere in India to whosoever wants anywhere in the world. The foundation for India to become the world’s resource for production and provision of software and other I.T services to global companies has been laid by the National Telecom Policy of Atalji’s government in 1998 ( NTP-1998). A report of the Prime Minister’s National Task Force on IT & Software informs the NTP-98.
8. At one time in 2010 , 14 telecom companies competed with one another; and together they were adding between 10 to 19 mln telephones per month. While when the National Telecom Policy 1994 (NTP-’94) was announced, India had only 10 mln telephones, all of them were wire lines. Now we have telephones aplenty and on demand for which the CTMS was campaigning:
Haath haath mein telephone : Gaon gaon mein Internet
Communicate for work : Commute (only) for pleasure
9. The contribution of Atalji for the development of I.T and telecommunications had been stellar. That also facilitated growth of India’s I.T and software companies especially in Bengaluru, Hyderabad , Delhi and Bombay. The software companies are spreading themselves into different cities. Today there are over 5 mln I.T company employees in the country and our companies are working with their people located in over 60 countries in the world. (1, 417 words)
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