Two years back India’s then finance minister Mr. Palaniappan Chidambaram said, “Regulation must stay one step ahead of innovation”. He also asked the developed countries to stop lecturing the emerging economies about what is right and what is wrong.
New Delhi now seems to be a fanatic fan of the developed world’s worst wrongdoing in telecoms regulation. It expects to raise US$7.2 billion from 3G auction. With spectrum costs and application fees, the government hopes to generate $9.9 billion for fiscal year 2009/10. During 2008/09 the government has raised $2.7 billion from levies on telecom operators. It yawns with more than $4.51 billion universal service fund.
Indian consumers have made these payments. Auction of 3G and WiMax licenses will further flatten their wallets. The government is now reviewing this idea and Mr. Chidambaram is a member of this panel. Nobody is expected to remind him of what he had said two years back on innovative regulation. But someone can pass him over a very recent article of Martin Wolf. It says: “India has prospered despite government, not because of it……….. The quality of government, now believed to be deteriorating, must, instead, radically improve.”
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