The report carried in this newspaper yesterday about the peculiarly one-sided contract between the Indian Space Research Organisation and a private entity called Devas, wherein satellite transponders and, by implication, a wide swathe of frequency spectrum were leased out for a fraction of the latter's current commercial value, once again brings into sharp focus the need to constitute an entity that will oversee the allocation/leasing of spectrum. The Comptroller and Auditor General is asking questions of the Department of Space in this regard. It believes that, on a presumptive basis, more than Rs 2 lakh crore may have been foregone by the exchequer as a result of the contract. Even if this is not a realistic figure, the fact of revenue lost cannot be overlooked. Such losses must be prevented in the future. After all, in purely economic terms, wireless spectrum is no different from an oil or gas field or a coal mine, or even just plain government land. The common feature is government ownership and constantly changing commercial value. In the instant case, for example, the S-band frequency used to have some value, which dropped to almost nothing when the technology changed but, with another change in technology, has once again acquired value. That no one can really predict how valuable a particular bit of the spectrum — or land or mine — may become cannot be an argument for not doing anything about setting up an agency with oversight powers.
Indeed, it was partly in recognition of this that the Government constituted a committee to advise it on spectrum pricing two years ago. It will be argued by some that such committees don't serve the purpose for which they were intended. While there is some truth in that, going by the principle of something is better than nothing, the time has surely come to dilute the absolute power of the Government in such matters — be it a resource under the land, over it or above it — by introducing a system of checks. Who knows, for example, what's been going on in the Defence sector, which is squatting on huge amounts of spectrum? Who would have thought that the Department of Space, which is directly under the Prime Minister, would have been so careless? Under any shroud of secrecy, costly mistakes can be made, even when there is no mala fide . Secrecy can and does protect both fools and knaves. The last 60 years bear ample testimony to this.
In a sense, what needs to be done is to introduce a well-regulated market for spectrum which is the composite name for a range of frequencies that are put to different uses. Such a market will ensure reasonably accurate price discovery and it will be superior to the current system where private information, ministerial discretion and plain negligence can and do lead to thoroughly undesirable outcomes.