Easy Escape in INDIA

Yogesh Parale:
The UPA government has now achieved stability and acceptance, completing a considerable period of governance. However, the old ghosts would not leave the government so easily. The huge money scandal regarding ' Spectrum Allocations' has pushed the government in a corner, defending its the decisions. The opposition, especially BJP has already demanded the resignation of Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology, Andi Muthu Raja. The scandal which approximately goes up to minimum sixty thousand crores has raised a question mark onthe transparency in the governance already.To put it in a simple way, Spectrum Allocation is basically permission granted by the government to Telecom operators for the enhancement of electro-magnetic waves. This electro-magnetic waves in a way, signifies the network capacity of any company which provides mobile services. The crux of the matter relates with the ill-timed allocations deliberately ignoring the current market price of the spectrum. The Union Minister for Communications and Information Technology Andi Muthu Raja cleared this permission for Spectrum Allocations with its base market price of year 2001 in year 2008! It is but natural that the actual market price of year 2008 now showing tremendous increase, this particular permission has not been granted professionally and with true motives behind it. The Union Minister obviously would have gained the 'Best Wishes' (!) for the chief operators regarding Telecom Industry.But, this whole malfunctioning of the system does not end so smoothly. The companies who got the spectrum licenses in such a cheap rate, they obviously used it as a golden opportunity to make money in the market. These companies sold their spectrum licenses to big players in the telecom industry getting huge profit, nearly seven hundred times greater than the price in which they bought the licenses. It is crystal clear that the government was reduced only to allocation on paper, with the privateCompanies getting actual profit in huge terms. For example, Unitech Wireless Company sold the majority stake to a company from Norway-Telenor up to 67.25 percent and made a tremendous profit.Assessing till now, the scam consists of minimum sixty thousand crore of value which is one of the biggest scandals that ever happened in India.
The political angle of this whole issue is naturally complex than the scandal itself. Andi Muthu Raja comes from Dravid Munnetra Kalaghama (DMK). It has been revealed now that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was opposed to Raja's appointment as a Union Minister for Communication and Information Technology for the second time. Now coming under enormous pressure for resignation, Raja has accused the PM himself for being aware of this particular allocation. He is being backed by DMK chief M.K. Karunanidhi. So, forget about sacking D. Raja, even the resignation on his own doesn't seem to be that simple. Stretching out the imagination, the only possibility appears is that- D. Raja would be accepting it in public; but as a mistake which would help to keep him out of focus and the whole issue would vanish as if nothing ever happened.It is nothing but irony as far as the opposition is concerned, that an issue of such a potential simply going waste because of the internal conflicts and clashes in the opposition itself. With BJP having a nightmare, even the other opposition parties not seem to be addressing this issue with a justified force. It is a saddening fact that with such an issue which can question the accountability of the government itself, nobody is interested. Even the media has viewed this as if a usual routine without any intensity.Now, only the upcoming winter session of Loksabha can answer whether the issue would be lost in an unparliamentarily behavior or it would be handled responsibly.