Chairman and Group CEO of Bharti Enterprises at the World Economic Forum (WEF) stressed that the reserve price set by the government for 2G auction has been very high and poor response to the whole process hogging the limelight was because of this.
The base price of 800 MHz has been fixed at 1.3 times that of 1,800 MHz, which is Rs 14,000 crore for five-MHz pan-India spectrum. The response from most of the telecom players to the ongoing auction has been subdued and the government is slated to garner substantially lower revenue from the spectrum auction this year than the targetted Rs 40,000 crore. There is unanimity among the industry and the experts that the reserve price has been kept at the higher level.
Sunil Bharati Mittal said, “We are supporters of auction but the reserve price has to be balanced”.
While speaking at the WEF session ‘Indian to Indian – Solutions to Transform India’, he categorically stated, “have an open and transparent system for auction but don’t set the reserve price too high”.
Taking part in the discussion, Minister of state for power with independent charge, Jyotiraditya Madhavrao Scindia pointed out, there was vociferous debate on spectrum auction today and the balance in the whole process would come with straight and clear-cut thinking.
Member of Parliament N K Singh agreed that any effort to balance the needs of the industry and the government should keep the larger public good at the core.
From spectrum auction, the discussion then took a turn to the predominant topic of public discourse in the country currently – industry, politicians, civil society and media – everyone needs self-assessment in the light of ll-round negativism.
Scindia began by stressing that the need was to focus on the positive aspects in all the segments rather than harping only on the negative aspects.
Mittal, in conformity with Scindia, said, “there is far too much of negativity’ and added that India was successful because of collection of small successes and those should be highlighted.
Singh said that everybody was under watch, adding that civil society was also being monitored.
With a consensus on the need for a shift from negativism to positivity, interesting propositions came on who should lead this.
Neelam Chibber, managing director, Industree/Mother Earth, said thought leaders were required to achieve this objective and stressed on the need for inclusion of all the segments of the society in policy making discourse and profit sharing.
Chibber said the solution was all about dialogue and collaboration. “It’s a very simple way, don’t think of competition always,” she added.
Mallika Dutt, president and CEO, Breakthrough, US, highlighted the significance of the issue due to India’s role on the global platform. Dutt said that India was facing a challenge which required mature handling. “We have occupied a place in the global society which is difficult,” she said.
Mittal came out with a workable solution on who should guide the change in thinking. “All four pillars need to come closer but not get too close. It has to be led by the political leaders. There is no bigger canvas than government which can shape the destiny of the nation,” he outlined.
“The theme must be congruity and balance for public good. Government needs to take lead and each segment need to take responsibility of own sphere,” Singh laid the rules of the game.
Chibber chipped in and said that best practices should be set out for all the areas.
Scindia, however, identified passion as the most important factor behind who could be the best to lead the change to positive ambience. “I assume that end game is successful. The person who has to lead it has to be most passionate about it with an approach that sets all the stakeholders on board,” he said.
The underlying message from the session was clear that there should be discussions and debate rather than confrontations and denouncing of one segment by the other on policy issues.
All the participants agreed that ongoing negativism was not going to help the country and strong leadership was required to change the track and remove trust-deficit.
The audience, however, didn’t appear convinced of the current leadership, be it political or industry, being capable of ensuring a positive outcome at the end of the lively deliberation.
