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Journalism of Courage
As the head of state, and a concerned citizen of the country, President K.R. Narayanan has his reasons for asking Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to reconsider the government8217;s recent decision to bail out various telecom operators. After all, the issue has generated so much controversy, for well over a year, and it is true that before he was removed Communications Minister Jagmohan had appeared to be opposing at least some of these concessions. That is, in fact, why the President asked Jagmohan to see him last week, to throw some light on the processes that went into the final decision-making. So when confronted with a situation where a controversial decision was taken by a caretaker government, the President appears within his rights to recommend caution.
What the President has not seen, however, is that the other side has equally valid and compelling arguments. For one, the issue at hand is so contentious that any decision, no matter what, would have raised a hue and cry and the country would have hadto pay a huge price for it. The debate, of course, centres around the fact that, after having committed to pay abnormally high fixed annual licence fees, the country8217;s private telecom operators found they couldn8217;t make these payments. The issue then was whether they should be penalised for this, or not. If they were to be penalised, and asked to give up their networks, it is well accepted that any new entrant would come in only on less-onerous terms 8212; that is, on what is called a revenue-sharing basis, instead of a fixed annual fee. Once the government accepted this postulation in the new telecom policy, the question was whether this new alternative could be given to the old operators 8212; could they be allowed to keep their networks, but now pay the new and lower licence fee? In other words, and this needs to be emphasised, the government will get the same amount of revenue in the future whether it gives the telecom licences to new operators or if it continues with the old ones 8212; the old operators have to,it goes without saying, clear all outstanding dues.
