Stuck in red tapeFor the last over 10 years, a common refrain that one hears from the foreign companies, investors or expatriates working in India, is that it is extremely difficult to set up and operate business in India. Having set up a number of projects in the telecom sector during the last decade, I always felt that the views from the overseas were exaggerated.The truth, however, is that we in India having lived in a controlled economy, have developed a mind set which accepts delays and continuous government intervention as a part and parcel of our daily lives and while we spend a valuable part of getting past such routine approvals our counterparts in the developed countries are using the same valuable time and resources to set up projects in record time with practically no cost over run.Let me share the experience of liberalisation in the basic telephony in India. It has taken three rounds of bidding and months of delays to finalise six licenses for providing basic telephone in sixstates. The six licensees have committed to collectively pay Rs 30,000 crores in license fee over 15 years and are sponsored by prominent foreign and Indian companies. While the licenses have been granted nearly 18 months ago, India is yet to experience the benefit of any one of these fixed telecom projects. If one was to go into the reasons of the delay, almost all of them rest at the doorsteps of the government agencies.Not to go into detailed reasons of such delays, I am picking up one very visible area of total confusion and lack of co-ordination at the highest inter-ministerial level. I am talking about the fundamental requirement of any basic telephone project - `Right of Way'. The Department of Telecom issued a Gazette Notification in September last year after some of the licenses had already been signed enabling them free and unhindered right for them to lay cables along the highways, through the forests and of course, the last mile copper cable along the streets in the townships. The work oflaying the fibre and copper cables which started with gusto had to be abandoned all of a sudden due to the stand taken by the National Highway Authority that the `Right of Way' along the national highways remains under their domain and the local municipal authorities also taking a view of not allowing the private operators to lay the access network in the cities.The sheer disregard of a notification issued by the Government of India is indeed galling. After having to run from pillar to post the concerned authorities are agreeing to allow the private operators to lay their cables only after they can extract their pound of flesh.The net result is a complete cessation of the project and a deadlock between the Ministry of Telecom, Ministry of Surface Transport and the state government agencies showing no signs of abatement. Notwithstanding the fanfare of the National Telecom Policy or the commitment of the Ministry of Telecom and the personal push being given by the senior individuals in the Ministry ofTelecom and the Ministry of Finance the projects have come unstuck.Today, I join the chorus with the foreign telecom fraternity and have no hesitation in saying that getting started in India is a project in itself. Having personally experienced the hurdles and delays in setting up core telecom projects, I strongly advocate for one final push to liberate the telecom industry from the cumbersome process of approvals.The author is Chairman of Association of Basic Telecom Operators and CMD of Bharti Enterprises.
