India is a democratic republic of billion plus people having the parliamentary

form of government with the philosophy of unity in diversity. It is considered as a

developing nation by many and as already developed one by some and as yet
underdeveloped by others. However, the fact is that compared to many other
nations India remains as an underdeveloped country as measured by the metrics of
human development indices and the vital parameters of economic growth. This
could be due to the adoption of wrong public policies and/or poor implementation of
right public policies. As such the task of right and high quality public policy making
and its effective implementation for our nation is a gigantic task considering the
large no. of issues involved and the conflicts of interests of various stakeholders.
In India the basic objectives of the governance as laid down by the
constitution includeelimination of poverty and illiteracy, boosting of productivity to
achieve self sufficiency in basic needs of housing, clothing and health for all
sections of the society and achieving economic and technological self-reliance etc.
The successive five year plans, meant for sustained development of the nation,
achieved far less successes than anticipated. However, the boost came in the form
of fast track liberalization which started in the early 90s. There are many sectors
where the government deliberately held its tight control in the name of license raj
which resulted in the poor growth of the infrastructure/economy of the country. The
key sectors identified for growth of the nation are: Agriculture, Power, Telecom,
Transportation, Ports, Highways, Civil Aviation, Financial and Labor Reforms,
Independent Media etc.
An important public policy issue is the spread of Telecom services across the
country as a key driver for the rapid growth of the economy. Long waiting time for
getting a telephone connection, and even if a telephone is available the nightmare
of making a long distance call, is a history now thanks to the liberalization of 90s.
However such a poor state of affairs was the direct result of utter failure of public
policy making in the telecom sector. The successive wrong policies adopted by the
governments include: license raj, high import tariffs, supporting inefficiency in
state owned companies, cross subsidization, not allowing technology transfers,
politicization in policy making thereby diluting the interests of the country etc are
solely responsible for the horrible past faced by all of us. Some of the glaring
failures of policy makers in the telecom sector are as follows:
1. No proper study / evaluation of the technology scenario prevailing in the
market worldwide and its suitability to the domestic environment.
2. Importing obsolete technology, knowing very well it is so, because of certain
extraneous considerations and not encouraging local R&D work and no proper
plan for the indigenous manufacture of the telecom gear through technical
collaborations involving the private sector.

3. Even after liberalization of 90s, the policy makers lacked vision and clarity on
the adoption of right policy in the telecom sector. This is very well
demonstrated by the launch of successive New Telecom Policies by every now
and then whenever there is a change of government at the center.
4. Depriving autonomy to state PSUs and excessive interference from
government because of political considerations, thereby making them only
loss making and not allowing them to take right business decisions for
competing with the private sector, like the case of PSUs BSNL and Air India.
Proposed Solutions
1. Policy makers should have through understanding/update of the latest trends
in the technology available worldwide, as this forms a key ingredient in the
decision making process which will help in the making of high quality
decisions. Generally in the government the policy makers are the Ministers
(politicians) assisted by the civil servants, who are considered as the
generalists rather than specialists. However the generalists need not be the
specialists of every technical field, but they should improve their competence
and analytical skills in assessing the impact of the policy proposals on the
sector and if necessary the requisite technical expertise can be obtained from
a team of separate expert consultants.
2. A typical example where our policy planners failed miserably is in the
identification of the right technology for adoption in the case of mobile
services, like GSM and CDMA, which lead to the violation of policy guidelines
by some operators due to technology limitations and again changes of policy
guidelines to suit these operators etc. All this could have been avoided had a
proper study, analysis and thorough discussion been there on the choice of
right technology, in the best interests of the country, before making the key
policy decisions and assessing its impact on all stakeholders.
3. Now almost similar type of policy issues/conflicts are arising again in the roll
out of 3rd generation mobile technology services by different operators. Also
another upcoming technology is Wimax for providing broadband internet
services through wireless medium. The government has already auctioned
the spectrum to all prospective operators, but lacked a clear cut vision/clarity
on the technology front to be deployed by the operators in the roll out of the
services. It is necessary in the interest of the nation for the planner to come
out with right proposals, thoroughly debate and evaluate the pros and cons
of each and every choice of the technology and takes all the stakeholders
into confidence before taking the just and right final decision.