The telecom sector today is one of the most thriving businesses in the country. Its success story is both interesting as well as complex with difficulties and complications that economic reforms faced since 1992. Though reform in the telecom sector began in the mid 90s, the real push came around 2003 when it began to grow at a phenomenal rate.
Though India was one of the first countries to start a telephone line in 1850, its growth remained stagnant rather so sluggish that only a tele-density of 0.02 per cent existed in 1947 and in the next 47 years, the density could only grow to 1.09 per cent. The success saga began with the economic reforms but the real push came after 2003 when author of A Bureaucrat Fights Back, Pradip Baijal, assumed charge of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). Through his determination and vision, he put the sector back on track by removing the confusion over rules in the sector. It was no easy endeavour, admits Baijal as he appreciates the role of the Supreme Court in the process. The telecom growth story is of about 13 years, since the sector was thrown open for private investments in 1994. In 1995, only one in a 100 Indians had a telephone.
Today, India’s telecommunication network is the second largest in the world. There are approximately 1.06 billion telephone subscribers in the country generating revenue of `4.20 lakh crore which is equivalent to $64 billion. While these numbers create an impression of a smooth journey of growth, the path was full of land mines laid to slow down if not entirely block the upward trajectory.
In the book, Baijal presents his side of the story with figures and documentary evidence about how vested interests opposed to reforms hatched conspiracies to derail the process. In his narration of the sequence of events, he describes as to how files and relevant documents go missing to fix an official who is determined to serve the government. Baijal’s version also gives his personal assessment of the AB Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh governments in which the former stands out while the latter comes out in bad light.
Baijal, a 1966 batch IAS officer of Madhya Pradesh cadre, was appointed head of the TRAI in 2003 during the Vajpayee government. Because of his engineering background and having been trained at Oxford University in the privatisation of public enterprises and the process of reforms, he could create conditions for growth though he had to face a lot of opposition from Minister for Communications Dayanidhi Maran in the Congress-led UPA government.
Giving a candid account of ordeals that he faced, Baijal explains how Maran took offence to his meeting with then PM Manmohan Singh and told him that he (Maran) “was ‘Prime Minister’ of Telecom and would take all decisions regarding telecom, and I had no business of meeting the PM”. “He warned that I could come to severe harm. He was proved right, since I did face severe hardships four years after my retirement,” writes Baijal, telling readers how he was subjected to inquiries from a Joint Parliamentary Committee and CBI. At the same time, he also had to face a media trial as false and untrue stories were planted against him.
Though in the end he came out unscathed, the “inquiries were a tremendous strain on me both financially and emotionally, and also on my health; and it will take me long before my life comes back on rails,” he writes in the book that could well be a useful guide to serving and aspiring civil servants. While the book gives useful tips to serving bureaucrats to prepare for their tasks, it also gives readers a glimpse of how elected governments work.
A Bureaucrat Fights Back: The Complete Story of Indian Reforms
By: Pradip Baijal
Publisher: HarperCollins
Price: `499
Pages: 352