Sabotaging Convergence

We

were searching for the final draft of Fali S Nariman Report of the Sub-Group on

Convergence. Somewhere, somebody had said that the Report was ready and the

Government had publicized it to get feedback from the industry and users. We

talked to people in the industry, the Government, and the user organizations.

Nobody knew where the Report was!

All possible sites including that of the DoT, MIT, NIC (these

agencies are chalking out the future of communications in our country) were

searched. Our entire team was at it but there was no sight of the Report. Then

someone accidentally bumped into a link that vaguely mentioned of a report of

some Sub-Group on Convergence that could be reached through the ICICI site. And

there it was!

Though many of us would like to brush this aside as a result

of sheer sarkari approach, I consider this as nothing short of sabotage. A

pioneering step in the direction of technological and governmental

liberalization is being blocked by vested interests, namely, the ministers and

their huge team of babus. They are just not ready to come to terms with the

sweeping and inevitable changes. It is learnt that some ministers and senior

officials concerned with IT, broadcasting and communications have been giving

instructions to go as slow as possible on convergence. They fear that one

ministry or regulator instead of three, will take away a lot of powers and

opportunities from them.

In this context it’s important that all those who wish the

country well and are interested in serious business and growth should

immediately go through the Report. Its full text is available on the Voice &

Data site www.voicendata.com and send in

whatever feedback they want to. We will forward it to the authors.

Interestingly, very few of the authors are active on the e-mail, so most

probably we will send your feedback through the good old post. It might not be a

bad idea to also demand for a probe into the manner in which this Report has

been kept away from public access.