Telecom Engineering
Engineering College by BSNL
Dt: 25/10/12
Engineering College by BSNL
Dr T.H.Chowdary*
It is reported that the BSNL is intending to start an engineering college . The Chairman of the AICTE is ready to approve of it. It is indeed surprising why the BSNL should now think of having an engineering college when the country is having more than 3600 engineering colleges, and a dozen and a half Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Every year, the intake is over 12 lakhs and nearly one third of them are related to telecoms, electronics, communications and IT. There is therefore an over -abundance of engineers to meet the requirements of BSNL. Further, the BSNL has been for the last three years incurring huge losses (see table). So the establishment of an engineering college seems to be a misapplication of its faltering resources.
Financial Performance of Telecom PSUs (2008-12)
(Fig. in Rs. Cr)
|
Year |
BSNL |
MTNL |
|
2010 |
-1,823 |
-2,610 |
|
2011 |
-6,384 |
-2,802 |
|
2012 |
-8,851 |
-4,109 |
(Source: Voice & Data, Oct 2012)
2. Let me recall the story of engineers in the Department of Telecoms and its successors MTNL & BSNL.
3. DOT had been recruiting 10 to30 graduate engineers through a competitive exam conducted by the UPSC for central engineering services. These are trained in Jabalpur and afterwards deployed into various segments of telecom engineering. In addition, it was recruiting science graduates as Technical Assistants(later designated as Engineering Supervisor and still later as Junior Engineers) and training them in the technologies and networks that the DOT was deploying to render telegraph and telephone services. In the late 1970s, with the assistance of the UNDP an Advanced Telecom Training Center-ALTTC was established in Ghaziabad (near Delhi). It designed courses for updating the graduate engineers of the DOT into new technologies that were being inducted from time to time. By the early 1980s, the DOT had about 15 Regional Telecom Training Centers (RTTCs) mostly in various state capitals to train the B.Sc graduates as Engineer Supervisors /Junior Engineers.
4. I have been since the late 1980s submitting a memorandum to every new Secretary and new Minister of the DOT that the ALTTC in Ghaziabad should be built up as a University and in addition to giving unit courses, it should give both undergraduate and post graduate and even doctorate level courses specifically designed for telecom and later on IT applications. It should undertake research and development also for application of wireless and computers for telecom services.
5. I had further mentioned that the Peoples Republic of China has the Beijing University of Posts & Telecoms ( BUPT) in Beijing and one or two more institutions elsewhere giving undergraduate and post -graduate courses. The DOT has been grievously lacking in the development of Management talents amongst its ranks. Engineers by seniority are designated as General Managers and then Dy. Directors Generals and Members of the Telecom Board/ Commission.
6. As long as the telecom services were administered as a departmental undertaking,” management” had no meaning. It was just administering rules and procedures laid down in more than a dozen code books and hundreds of circulars. Ideas like costs, prices, efficiency, productivity, financial performance had no meaning at all. All money required for capital investment was to be generated from within since the 1980s DOT increased prices and generated the surpluses required. Accounts were maintained. More than a dozen code books laid down all sorts of rules from how to register an application for telephone to delivery of a telegram, billing and so on. It was the rules incorporated in the code books that were being applied or administered by the General Managers.
7. I foresaw that the telecom services would be a disaster unless these are constituted into a corporate structure, under the Indian Companies Act. In the 1980s I submitted a proposal for a TAIL- Telecom Authority of India Ltd., just like SAIL – Steel Authority of India Ltd, and GAIL - The Gas Authority of India Ltd. In the 1980s corporatization and privatisation were bad words. If I openly advocated them, I would have been accused as a CIA agent or America’s stooge .
8. I knew that sooner or later telecoms would have to be corporatized, demonopolised, subjected to competition under statutory regulation. By 1984 in the most important countries USA, Japan and the UK telecoms were demonopolised and fierce competition set in . India would have to do the same if the telecoms are to serve the new economy that was in the offing. When Rajiv Gandhi became the Prime Minister, he was thinking of a new structure for not only telecoms but for many state-owned corporations. It is necessary that the engineer- managers in the DOT and its future corporations are instructed in economics, finance, banking, costing, pricing, dividends, competition and markets and so on. Therefore I proposed that the ALTTC be converted into an university, along with advances in engineers for serving DOT engineers and its future corporations, courses would contain all other subjects that would go to make a General Manager, Directors and the CEOs of a company . I have been submitting this proposal to every new telecom Minister and to every Secretary of the DOT and the Chairman of the Telecom Commission. Not one was moved. The consequences are very plain. We see the BSNL and the MTNL managed by mere engineers are declining and destined to be like Air Indi a, ITI,HMT, HCL etc guzzlers of public money as Government of India companies. Doubts are raised as to whether they would survive at all and whether it would not be better to wind them up.
9. The proposal to start an engineering college by the BSNL now is too little and too late and absolute waste of the resources of the BSNL /MTNL. There are enough number of excellent engineering &Management institutes in the country. Those who cannot manage the BSNL well cannot be expected to shape and manage an engineering institute of excellence. (956 words)
END