Dangerous Openness!

Open systems, open platforms, open standards… Anything open is cool these
days.

India is not far behind. In fact, if anything, it is a few steps ahead. We
have even tried out Open Agenda. Remember (I bet you do) Agra?

These days, we are trying something really path-breaking. Open legislation.
The epitome of which is the much-talked about Convergence Bill, ready from the
govern-ment’s side to become an act. When passed, it will govern the provision
of all communications services in India. Some of its clauses are so open that
you can actually interpret them any way you like.

To understand the openness, take, for example, Chapter V: The powers, duties,
and functions of the Commission. Yes, a lot of duties and functions are
specified, including the ones like "take steps to regulate or curtail the
harmful and illegal content on the Internet and other communications
services". But what about the power? The bill is completely silent on that
front. What about the interpretation of words like, to take the above example,
"harmful". Who will decide what is harmful? And what steps can a
regulator take today to regulate content on the Internet? All of you know the
answers to that question, but not our policy makers.

Without going further into the chapters and clauses, let me raise one simple
question–Is this vague approach intentional? If yes, then what are the
intentions?

I can take three guesses.

One. Let us assume first that the intention is indeed noble! Leaving a lot of
things unspelt means, in the hands of a strong and progressive regulator, it
will become a great tool for introducing radical reforms. Great idea. Except for
the fact that the probability of that happening in India is less than 0.1. In
1994, the architect of the National Telecom Policy, Nagarajan Vittal, had to
give in to the pressure from minister Sukh Ram, and the NTP 94 was announced
with quite a few major omissions from Vittal’s draft policy, including the
most important issue of regulation. Many stakeholders did not mind much, as they
had complete faith in Vittal, the radical reformer, who, they thought would have
his way as the person in charge of implementation. But as it was to be, he was
taken out of the communications ministry and the consequence of what followed is–today’s
struggling industry. Nothing has changed since then, for us to be too optimistic
this time. And also not to forget, a policy is a statement of intent. An act is
a legal document. You cannot have the same kind of approach to both.

Two. Let us assume that this has been done intentionally by one or a set of
powerful business lobbyists. Well, that is a great scoop for a newspaper. But if
that is the case, only God can save the reforms in India.

Then there is the possibility of number three, which I believe, is most
likely what has happened. The coalition government has just tried to shy away
from taking stronger decisions and passed the contentious issues to the
regulator. In that case, all of us know what to expect. Series of lawsuits. Long
delays. Slower implementation. Even slower network rollouts. All at the cost of
the consumer and the Indian economy.

Unfortunately, no one seems bothered. The telecom industry bigwigs are too
absorbed in issues like the fourth operator licensing, limited mobility, CPP and
so on. So much so that they do not have time for thinking about the most
important piece of legislation being prepared after more than a century and that
will govern their business for decades.

This can, and does, happen only in India.