WorldTel may invest 6 states

Under the terms of the proposal, the state government will also be required to pick up 26 per cent equity inthe project. The six other states which have signed such agreements with WorldTel are Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka and West Bengal. In Gujarat, it has entered into a Rs 400 crore joint venture with the state government to set up a a modern information communication network.

Pitroda, who was the first chairman of the Telecom Commission, criticised the policy under which huge licence fees where collected from private operators for telecom services. "The people of India are still without any telecom infrastructure because of this. The new telecom policy should have been announced much earlier," he said.

"Information is a great leveller. It can put two unequal human beings on the same footing. I’m sure it can do the same to nations," Pitroda said in his speech on "Leapfrogging – Telecom and the Internet" at the CII session. Pitroda was responsible for the large scale proliferation of STD/PCO booths in rural areas as founder of the Centre for Developement of Telematics. C K Prahalad,co-author of Competing for the Future and Harvey C Fruehauf Professor of Business Administration, said India was undergoing a dramatic transformation from the inside. These signs of change didn’t mean much by themselves but were very significant collectively, he said.

In the stock market, for instance, knowledge based firms like Satyam, Infosys and Wipro commanded a market captilisation better than 10X of their revenue. "MNCs such as HLL, Glaxo or Colgate Palmolive command a 5X. Traditional blue-chip firms such as Telco, Tisco and Reliance command less than 1X. Groups of companies, such as the Birlas, the Modis, Essar and others command a less than 0.5X," he pointed out.

Highlighting the importance of IPR in the managerial revolution, he said the Indian industry was under investing in innovation. Between 1974-94, ten of the top Indian firms recieved less than 100 patents, while Lucent Technologies alone recieved 800 to 900 patents a year, he said.

APJ Abdul Kalam, scientific advisor to the DefenceMinistry, said his vision for India in 2020 was transformation from a developing country to a developed country. The key parameters to judge this were near 100 per cent literacy, high technology base, world class institutions, rupee as a world currency and self-relaince in critical sectors.