2G RAJA MEDIA AND OPPOSITION

the recent spate of scams to hit the headlines with alarming frequency is troubling in more ways than one.
one of the big trouble is inability or indifference of the media to understand how the figure quoted is derived and how this scam happened exactly. for various reasons, one of them being TRP .. they accept and in fact propagate these mind boggling figures.

one of the biggest scam to hit India - as media is often quoting it , to come into limelight recently is 2G spectrum scam. everyone agrees that there is a scam..but the figure quoted varies widely with the political affiliation of the person quoting it. it ranges from amazingly wild 1.76 lakh crore rs. quoted incessantly by BJP to "0" a rather hilarious atempt by mr Kapil Sibal. :)
in fact CAG have quoted a range of figures for the loss due to 2G spectrum auction from 50,000 crore to 1.76 lakh crore.
the figure varies.. but all are certain.. to lesser or greater degrees that A. Raja is the villain.

But no one in the mainstream media have made an effort to put the scam into perspective, taking all sides into account. all believe that CAG is sacrosanct and whatever it says is whole and complete truth.
It is not so.. Let us see how..

CAG works on estimates, on what could have happened/not happened .. if so and so things were done/not done. They don't deal with policy matters but only take notice of the accounts concerned.
the quoted loss (in 2G spectrum ) is based on a bid by one company for the 3G spectrum - failed - because the company itself was not sure that they can recover money if they pay so high price.. hence withdrew.

also CAG takes the number of mobile users into account. as if the number is going to increase irrespective of policy.
Let us take an example..
A bridge was built, and a committee was set up to determine the amount of toll charged from vehicles. Committee settles on rs 5 per vehicle but a lone dissenting member in the committee says rs 5 is to minuscule and considering the cost of building the bridge etc , the toll charged should actually be rs 500.
now after a year, if the total toll revenue was declared as 1 crore. The CAG will simply report that if the rs 500 per vehicle was charged as that member suggested, the toll revenue would have been rs 100 crore. thus loss to the exchequer is rs 99 crore!!

They dont take into consideration that if the toll was made rs 500 the number of vehicles who used the bridge would have been drastically reduced.. and possibility that the the revenue wouldn't even have touched rs 1 crore mark.

Such are the mysterious ways of CAG's working. *

the figure derived by CAG is similar.


Blaming raja only for the policy matter such as this is rather erroneous as policy making involves large number of people... bureaucrats, technocrats, foreign experts, those who have studied working of such spectrum allotment and it's impact in other nations, industry people all come together to decide the policy.
In this case TRAI wasthe main body on whose recommendations the 3G auction was based.
Now government policy was "getting revenue is not the aim of this spectrum auction "
That was clear from the outset.. and every minister from Arun Shourie to Kapil Sibal agrees with it. The main aim of the auction is to award the spectrum to reliable players who have the expertise to spread the network in shortest time all over the India.. hence benefit the customers the most.
And here exactly raja falters.
Raja is responsible not for the loss due to policy.. but in fact the loss to the national exchequer and to masses for not actually following the policy.

Raja had not followed the "first come first serve" policy of spectrum allotment. He changed it arbitrarily, changing the date of allocation, changing the parameters of allocation so that few players get more benefit than others.
Raja changed (preponed) the date arbitrarily from 1 oct to 25 sept arbitrarily so that some serious bidders were unable to furnish details and few chosen ones get the spectrum.

He is accused of setting some front companies like swann telecom , where , it is said that he have interests, so that they got the spectrum for some 1200 crore and within less that 3 months they sold it to serious players for rs 45oo crore. (the loss there is not only of govt's but also of masses who paid more amount to companies.. who naturally charged more rates to the costumers to recover their money)
Also TRAI's guidelines about confiscation of spectrum if the player fails to reach the minimum requirements of towers, number of customers etc about service specifications within a year, were not followed. some players got more leeway, and their spectrum was not confiscated and allotted again to serious players. some companies just sat on the spectrum and then sold it at very high amount to these big companies.
An ordinary citizen lost much more in all this. he had to wait for long for the service.. also the quality of service was not good. and also he had to pay much more for it.

Raja is guilty, not because he lost 1.76 lakh crore (whatever that amount meant.. i'm not sure how many 0's are in it) but because EVERY person in the nation suffered because he wanted to favour some people.

Raja is also guilty of sitting for long time .. almost a year.. on 3G spectrum allocation for reasons known to him only. When the world is getting near of 4G.. we in 2011 have 3G service in only selected cities. (Japan had 3G since 2001) Here too the talk is he wanted to favor some companies.. but as they were not yet ready for 3G specifications.. he sat on the spectrum for long and only opened it to bidding when these big RELIABLE companies were ready.

In the process we can imagine to the loss to the nation, as mobile connectivity is like roads, electricity.. have cascading effect on nation's development. And due to Raja's indifference to nation's needs.. nation's development had been halted or slowed down.

Raja is not guilty of just loss of such minuscule sum as 1.76 lakh crore. He is guilty of halting a speeding nation.. stopping it from becoming superpower.

now to the media and our esteemed opposition BJP.. a word of advice.. if you play by the rules of TRP, misinformation.. you'll die by TRP and misinformation.
BJP should take into consideration that just rabble rousing is not going to benefit it.. they should work as a responsible opposition and should go beyond just sloganeering and yatras and make some useful contribution to the nation's development.
BJP should understand that by accusing govt of scams everywhere, it is reducing it's reliability as eventually people will not listen to it even when it have to say something serious.
Media should introspect too.. for how long will you rely on breaking news and some information leaked (many a times deliberately) by govt officers. they should not just be the conduit of information as they are doing it now.. but a processor of information. they should pause a bit and talk about policy than figures (that are making little sense nowadays as the scam amount have now astronomical figures)

*about CAG.. is CAG is such ineffective ?
the answer is NO! CAG figures are used in PAC to understand the policy and cornering govt for a policy they pursued.
Also CAG figures can be useful for future policy making as one could now know what they expect if other policy routes were used.