Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Eearly this year when Communication Minister Ram Vilas Paswan offered a free telephone connection to every employee of the telecommunication department, it was justified on the ground that it would help sell the idea of corporatisation to the employees. The indefinite strike they have begun on Wednesday disproves the minister8217;s theory that a free telephone will keep the strike away. Far from that, this is the second strike since the freebies were announced if the mass casual leave agitation they resorted to in June is also taken into account. The moral of the story is that new ways will have to be found to make corporatisation acceptable to the employees. At the root of the standoff is the fear the employees nurse about their future once the department is truly corporatised. They can hardly be blamed for they are so accustomed to the security of tenure that nothing else bothers them really. No matter what inconveniences sloth and inefficiency in the department cause to the telecom user, they are blissfullyaware that at the end of every month, they are entitled to a handsome salary, not to speak of a host of perks, both legal and illegal. The monopoly the corporations under the department enjoyed ensured that they were never in the red8217;.
With corporatisation, all this will come to an end. No more will MTNL and VSNL, for instance, enjoy monopoly; the cabinet committee on economic affairs has already decided that the VSNL8217;s monopoly on international telephone service will end on April 1, 2002. It is too recent to need recounting how ending the VSNL8217;s monopoly as an Internet service provider has benefited the subscriber. If until a few months ago, the Internet user had to queue up with an elaborate form to get an Internet connection, today private Internet providers call them up with offers of free service. If the plans to liberalise the basic telephone service sector are taken to their logical conclusion, MTNL will cease to enjoy whatever monopoly it has at present. In short, what all this foretells is a regime where competition will be the watchword. It is this fear of the competition where the fittest will survive that bothers the telecom employees. The three main demands on which they have gone on strike are all manifestations of this fearcomplex. So what needs to be addressed immediately is this complex.
