Raja's legacy

Sat, Oct 24 06:49 AM

A Raja, the cabinet minister for telecommunications, is a fantastically lucky man. Even with the erstwhile leaders of international finance as mocked as they are today, it is difficult to imagine any other job on the face of the planet where someone could lose Rs 60,000 crore for their employer and still be re-employed when their term came to an end.

For that — Rs 60,000 crore — is what the exchequer did not receive thanks to Raja's actions as minister. Take a moment to consider what that means for the ruling alliance. For one, it is strapped for cash to carry out its ambitious agenda. That was, for example, exactly as much money as was set aside for the original farmers' loan waiver announced in the 2008 Union Budget. And, more than that, there is the question of the telecom sector itself. Once an engine of Indian growth through rapid modernisation and reform, it is rapidly becoming a byword for unreformed lack of transparency, thanks to actions such as Raja's.

The CBI's raid on the ministry, a deeply disturbing turn of events at any time, would be even more shocking if the facts about what happened with 2G cellphone licenses weren't already generally known. There are no two opinions about the fact that, instead of submitting to a transparent bidding process, the telecom ministry handed out licenses on a first-come-first-served basis to companies that then sold them near-immediately at a profit — that enormous sum of money that should have come to the exchequer. The most charitable explanation for this is crony capitalism of the sort that licenses and permits invariably bring in their wake. The UPA needs to recover its reformist credentials. It should start by completing the reclamation of crucial infrastructure ministries from those who have held up the reform process. Roads and highways, for example, might see some actual action after five years of neglect. Telecommunications should expect no less.

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