The Hindu Business Line : Miscommunications from the Minister

ARUN SHOURIE has been the odd man out there among politicians. They do not understand what he says, nor is he able to make sense of their grievances. Having announced a tariff plan that is baffling everybody by its sheer complexity, he is dumbly holding the receiver and they are all shouting `foul'.

It is fair to surmise that the scores of rows and columns that contain details of phone charges, laid out like a railway timetable, should have been created by the backroom economists and accountants in the DoT.

One cannot fault them for not having an eye for detail, or for not revealing all that mattered and so got metered. Yet, while transparency is usually a virtue when it is not there, there is much revolt when it is achieved, as in the case of the sarkari telecom companies.

Happily, on the other side are the private cell operators, many of whose services are so opaque that mobile users end up holding the cell, with their credit wiped off too quickly or debits mounting with no control.

Phone, as a suffix, refers to a device that emits or receives sounds, from Greek phônç, meaning sound.

Phoenicians, however, have nothing to do with phones, but were people from ancient Phoenicia, coastal lands in present-day Syria (which is as much troubled as the new phone regime), where they established thriving trading ports. Unfortunately, Minister's explanations about phones are seen as phoney.

Public sector phone companies may not be golden geese; yet there is the risk in killing them too soon. As in the case of the mythological Phoenix, from the pyre and ashes there could rise another, that is private and more usurious.

When favourite words and phrases for elected representatives are `steep hike', `common man', and `rollback', a minister has but few options.

If pressure mounted, as in the case of VAT, there could be a last-minute rollback, even if it meant the risk of earning the tag `rollback minister' which already belongs to Yashwant and Jaswant.

When in economics there are no free lunches, the furore over free calls seems out of place. If users of a service need to pay for usage, `free' distorts the picture. With all the churning that is happening now, Mr Arun Shourie can even push to get the `free' out the window, and allow the companies to announce occasional `offers' to keep customer interest alive. Also, remember, that in the power industry too, it is the free thing that is now getting blamed for all woes.

That could irk many, but do not despair, because if the telecom companies have been giving calls free, subscribers have been paying undue rentals.

For one, nobody knows why we pay a rental and how it is computed. Is not usage charge sufficient for the companies to recover any investment they made years ago in the infrastructure that supports communication?

Sadly, however, it is not only the rental that has been going to the government through the telecom companies, but also the service tax that has been imposed on it.

A different revenue model may need to be thought of for assuring cash flows to the companies, and providing for massive investment such as the Rs 29,000 crore BSNL requires in the next five years.

If rates were not revised where would the money come from, asks the minister, but one wonders if subscribers are already subsidising a lot of wastage and inefficiency, bureaucracy and corruption, in these bodies.

The Minister of Communications is getting blamed misleading the House. Also, for all the talk about pulse rate, he is criticised for not knowing the public pulse.

To add to his woes, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) is yet to announce its "final verdict" on the issue. Even when it did, it is quite likely that many will not understand the new regime for long and the communication gap may linger on.

hindubusinessline@hotmail.com

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