Sunday, June 19, 2011

My 2 cents on 2G



Not only energy…Even money neither be created nor destroyed but it can be transformed from one form to another form.

I have heard lot about the magic number of 176lakhs score scam in India, where is the money why don’t we seize them. It is just exist in the every one pockets of the Indian citizen who are using the mobile phone.

It is in the pocket of vegetable vendor, fish cart woman, poor farmer, construction labor, driver, maid, and many more people in the bottom of the pyramid. Where technology is out of reach all the time for centuries for these below poverty line people…

If suppose let us assume , if they have sold out 2G India license for 176 core …all these TATA , Vodafone , Reliance big shots are not running business for charity..Or nonprofit organizations. They would have rendered their services with minimum of 30% profit and they would have collected 228lakh crores from the pockets of again Indian citizens.

Mobile business is one of the most competitive businesses in India and running with cut throat competitions between them. Anyone can go and buy SIM card for just 10Rs and get a lifelong incoming call free, which is 7 Rs per minute once upon a time.

People are able to make a call for 10 paise, 30 paise  and 50 paise. We are connected well now; even though we are 7th largest country in terms of geographical area…With 1 RS u can make a call all over India from TamilNadu to Kashmir and from Bombay to West Bengal.

 I strongly believe any country can become a developed country by only two ways.

                First one education and the second one is Technology.

All our people should be affordable to use the advanced technology, by which we are eliminating more and more waste and being more &more productive. 2G is affordable to everyone but not the same case for 3G. Source: Wikipedia

 “The 3G service is used by the minority users in the country who own 3G handsets and the prices of the 3G services are currently out of reach of the pockets of most Indians. This led to the slow adoption of 3G”

The above couple of lines are from Wikipedia, those who are in India will know how affordable 3G Price plans are at India. U need to shell out minimum of 800Rs from your pocket for 3G services, which is not affordable to a common man in the society.

Now let me get in to more details of 2G.  All the above stuffs are just either consequence or reality exist in India. It is not just my imagination out of my mind.

Before defending I would to like to completely agree there is scam, there is corruption and there is bribe exists in all the government process from birth certificate to death certificate. Whether you and me like it or not, it just exists. What we are going to do about this is a next question??

It starts from village administrative officer to some top most ministers at India.
If there was a fovorism and if there was money under the table, Supreme Court is dealing with it, anything illegal should be brought to justice. I don’t want to jump in to conclusion. Guilty should be punished as per the law; I have no second though on this.

What I would like to defend is a magnified number created by the Media of 176lkahs crores in every one’s mind and two much hype built around that…in fact many unbelievable stories built around that...Tamilnadu govt giving TV on the scam money, free rice..free fan and mixer ..each person should get 40 000 Rs..oh my god !!

There is no end to it… there is scam no one will listen but if you say 176 lakh crore everyone will turn to you…

In simple terms this is what happened.

There was a thought process going on to do a bidding process for many days from 2002 for India telecom license and it was implemented in 2010 April for 3G spectrum license. Since 3G is brand new.

Government expected 35000 crores out of that but everyone shocked when we received 1 lakhs 6 thousand cores out of that…really nobody expected that !!

The 3G and broadband spectrums jointly fetched Indian Rupee symbol.svg106,000 crore (US$23.53 billion) for the government against its estimates of 35,000 crore.
Source: Wikipedia:

CAG group (controller and Auditor general) went back to their drawing board extrapolated the existing stuffs and said if we would have gone for the 2G bidding process we might have received the 176lakhs crores out of that…the magic number.

But no Top CAG officials, IAS officers, secretary and even prime minister knew or predicted this magic number much earlier; otherwise they could have stopped it. 

That is what a Technology or innovative product or process can do...

For eg , Even shiva Nadar can claim , government has not processed my license fast or allowed me to bring mini computers in 1980’s , Otherwise I would have been a Microsoft and now HCL lost 100 billion USD because of that..because no one new importance of OS or software cost..When focus is in Hardware…

2. Even yahoo can claim, if we have accepted Google search engine when they were showed demo to us just as Stanford students ,We wouldn’t have lost 50 BUSD in search business..We should sue CEO of Yahoo... No... because we don’t know search business have such a huge potential!!

3. Even Sachin can claim 2008 IPL I lost 4 MUSD because of iconic status, if I would have been gone for bid , I would have got more than MS dhoni 15 MUSD..Where my contract was just 11 MUSD…No because nobody knew that IPL will be a huge success and players will go for such a high price…
You cannot blame Lalit modi for Sachin loss; it is his innovative brain child and become huge success than the expected.

The Root cause for the entire problem in government DOT (department of Telecommunications) is Turnaround time of new process from conception to deployment is very very slow…like a snail. Many many crores can be saved not by just fixing with the people...by fixing with the process.

50% reduction in cycle time in any government process can do that!!   

We are the process owners and we should take the bottom line responsibility for the existing conditions from prime minister to a common Indian citizen.

My conclusion is Guilty should be punished based on the law for any illegal activities, but one cannot blame or sue a person based on this magic number 176lakh crores.

In simple, it is just invalid to call it as a magnanimous scam.

If they knew the value before 3G auction and CAG published this magic number, but still government went ahead with the old process, it is worth to have a call and investigate based on this Magic number.

Otherwise it is just a drama. Everyone will try to get some fish from the unclear pond.

We are just either spectators or parrots!!



Thanks,
Jay