The $18 billion headlines that have been the news in recent weeks tell you one very important thing — that Indian telecom has reached the level of global franchises. The sector is only about a decade old, and actually, if you leave out the many years of poor regulation and disputes, it is actually much younger. It has really grown in the last few years as a result of steady and consistent policy-making and a far more accountable and transparent sense of regulation. Investors are no longer looking at telecom as related to infrastructure but also in the context of India’s strong consumer economy. I have been a player in the telecom sector from its earliest days and have ridden its successes and dismal failures. It makes me proud to see Indian telecom today — successful despite many agenda driven policies and regulations — a symbol of true Indian entrepreneurial spirit and Indian consumerism triumphing over vested interests. One of the ways to understand how far the industry has come is to consider how difficult it was in the mid- to late-’90s for Indian telecom companies to raise even small amounts of equity and risk capital. But the important thing is to ensure that the telecom sector continues to grow and thrive and, in the coming years, addresses the pressing issues of rural connectivity and teledensity. For that, we have to ensure that policy and regulation remain consistent, transparent, and honest to the objectives to be met. Our policy and regulation-making and enforcement have been, to put it politely, deliberately or accidentally porous. For example, for over a decade, the entire policy objective of 51 per cent domestic ownership has been violated happily by several companies with little or no effort to enforce the spirit of the “sensitive sector policies”. There have been several other such instances over the past years — of some companies breaking the spirit of the law, leaving the many that adhered to its spirit disadvantaged, prompting a minister to comment, “To survive in telecom, companies needed to have a dirty-tricks department.” One reason I decided to join politics and take on the responsibility of an MP earlier this year was to be able to play a role in this development — and perhaps to ensure that the policy mischief of the past is not repeated. Companies should not require any dirty tricks department. For the record, my politics is not all about telecom. There are many other things that interest me and I will focus on them as part of my career in public life. Also I have no financial interest in telecom services, since I exited my investment a year or so ago. Apart from its own success in enabling and empowering millions of citizens, the telecom sector is also the first big success of private investment in infrastructure. Also, it is one of the principal reasons for the success and development of the domestic off-shore IT industry. For this and other things, the sector has not really been given due recognition. As with all successes, there are many claimants, but there are two people who must be given credit for unleashing this success: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for opening up the sector when he was finance minister in 1991, and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, for his forward-looking policy of 1999, which set the economic blueprint for the growth of the sector. The Indian telecom sector is now going to be truly integrated into a global landscape and the technology trends that will sweep the world in coming years will change or modify what the operators do and what consumers experience. Broadband wireless like Wimax, and the new generation of chipsets and devices that will follow, may give consumers other alternate services. The industry can now be called mature; companies draw capital, unlike in the pioneering days.I agree with the argument that new spectrum allocations are done through a more auction-like model. Else, you may have a situation very akin to the SEZ controversy, in which the process of allocation of national or state resources in itself raises questions and controversy when there is no need to. The writer is chairman and CEO of Jupiter Capital and Rajya Sabha MP
