The more things change ...

My Week

The week began with the telecom industry trying to figure out Communication Minister A Raja's two missives to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, news that Business Standard first wrote about on Sunday (4 November). Raja is an interesting minister by any standard. Several ministers (and secretaries) have come and gone; from Buta Singh who lasted only a few days, to Sushma Swaraj who was pitch-forked out of Sanchar Bhawan and into provincial politics, to Jagmohan, Ram Vilas Paswan, Pramod Mahajan, Arun Shourie, Dayanidhi Maran and now Andimuthu Raja. I can disclose here, without any regret, that I was close to none. Each person had his own style "" Jagmohan famously posed 10 questions to the industry (some of which remain unanswered to this day), while Paswan directed MTNL to provide free answering machines to correspondents on his beat.

Tuesday
BK Modi is a famous industrialist, whose hats are even more famous (I first saw him wearing one at the Geneva airport in 2003). His Spice Telecom was the big mystery of the week. The company sent me a letter, dated 31 October, saying it was withdrawing from the ongoing case at the telecom tribunal. (It later emerged that Spice had not done so till at least the weekend).

Wednesday
The Planning Commission was to meet the day after to approve the 11th Plan, and our textiles reporter, Rupesh Janve, spent some time figuring out the changed allocations and spending priorities. Montek Singh Ahluwalia summed it up very well when he pointed out that while there is good reason to be optimistic about revenues, controlling non-Plan expenditure including subsidies is a difficult task. For him, and others in the government, like Finance Minister P Chidambaram, there are obvious uncertainties associated with the Sixth Pay Commission. Last heard, North Block is keen the award come in the next fiscal only.

Thursday
Early on, I heard Jairam Ramesh had written to Sunil Mittal and apparently taken the Bharti boss to task for criticising state-owned BSNL. Ramesh wasn't keen to publicise his missive. However, a news agency went to town with the news in the afternoon, prompting Mittal to say he resented Ramesh's charge that he was lobbying to block competition: "You know me better. We are always willing to face any competition, including from some very powerful competitors and many times with our hands tied behind our back".

While all this was going on, everyone in Business Standard seems to have added a few kilos. Nuts are good for health, we are told. My senior colleague, and geeky number-cruncher, Sunil Jain takes the advice very seriously. However, the "nuts" and many other unprintables that he mutters aloud every time he reads the latest on the telecom front are clearly something else. And yes, the 11th Plan was finally approved.

Friday
Diwali couldn't have been better (though I would very much have liked to be invited to a card party). We are all a bit fatter, wheezy, harder of hearing and much lighter in the pocket.

Saturday
I am back at work. The first work-related phone-call that I got was again about the various ongoing telecom shenanigans. I will write about it, but am convinced that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Also...

The lady anchors, on the normally staid business TV channels, looked gorgeous, but Udayan Mukherjee takes the cake. With muhurat trading on Diwali day ending on a bit of a sour note, the CNBC star sounded very distraught and looked disappointed.