Sachin & the Delhi Density
(If you came here for some news on Sachin Tendulkar, Delhi Daredevils & IPL, sorry - this is about Sachin Pilot) :-)
There were a lot of discussions in MoMo Bangalore forums about some comment made by Sachin Pilot on mobile services for voice calls becoming free & stuff. At that time itself, I wondered why people were taking a minister’s talk seriously. For example, if Raja says he was responsible for the telecom revolution in India, no one really takes it seriously, right? But then, I thought this guy is one of the young ministers who is told to hold a lot of potential for the future and a Wharton alumnus too, so may be he is sensible!
After a few days, an interview in Knowledge@Wharton site appeared of this guy - which kind of confirmed to me that this guy is “just another” minister and should really not be taken seriously.
Sorry, I really do not have anything against Sachin Pilot, but after reading below, you decide if he should be taken seriously.
India Knowledge@Wharton: What kind of strategies from your business school days are you using to solve problems that you face today?
Pilot: I think good education always holds you in good stead, especially from a college and university [like] Wharton. [It has] really added to my world view and how I have seen various things develop and the many challenges that we face … Most of the challenges today are quite global in nature and one has to have a perspective where the horizons are very wide and where we are able to understand the issues so that you are best able to deal with it and best suited for the kind of policy that you want to initiate. So I think the experience and the education I’ve had, especially with the faculty and the kind of exposure that I had at Wharton, have made me better prepared to take on the challenges, especially in the economic arena … I think education of any sort helps you in policy making, whether you are a lawyer, doctor, or engineer, but I think an MBA degree has been very, very useful to me.
Did you understand anything? The Q was simple - What “strategies” are you using to solve problems! The only strategy seems to be - to give long winded useless answers!! Way to go, my dear MBA.
India Knowledge@Wharton: You also said that India must bridge the digital divide so that the ‘other’ India can be the part of the growth story. Can you tell us what prompted you to launch that project?
Pilot: We’ve had tremendous growth in the last 15 years. I also personally believe that we have to make sure that the goods and the services of the government [are] distributed equitably. I think every Indian has a right to be a part of the information technology revolution that we’ve had in the last 15 years. It should not remain isolated to just big metro cities of Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata. I think people in smaller towns … and smaller villages have as much of a right to participate in India’s growth story
Oh Really? I thought Chennai was also a Metro city.. and the ones like Bangalore were also considered in such lists :)
India Knowledge@Wharton: What kind of challenges are you facing?
Pilot: If you go back and look at 1995, our Delhi density — density basically is the number of phone lines per 100 people — was about 1.5% because we were dependent on wires being dug up or put out so that people could get telephone connections.
This is hilarious :)) I know of tele-density.. Now, what is “Delhi Density” - I sincerely hope this was a mistake with the transcription :)
India Knowledge@Wharton: Let me switch back to the digital divide question for a second. You have two very disparate audiences that you are trying to address; sort of the haves and have nots. What kind of strategies are you using to get buy-in so that you can move forward in this project?
Pilot: I think the [haves] you are talking about are the ones who have enough disposable income, who have mobility, who live in large cities or large towns. ……. There are villages that are sparsely populated [and] private companies will only go to areas where there is profit to be made. They will not go into rural areas, rural parts of India. That’s why the Indian government has now decided to put up mobile towers and give the backbone infrastructure to areas [with] populations in villages of less than 500. In areas like the Northeast part of India, the hilly terrain areas, the tribal areas, the really poorer states, those are the areas where the private operators really are not that comfortable going in, but I think we as the government have to ensure that even those people have a right to be a part of the telecom revolution. To that end, we have got this fund that is [worth] more than $4 billion. All of that is going to be used to make sure that we ensure connectivity in bordering parts of our country, in the desert areas, in the tribal areas so on and so forth.
“This” fund - what fund? USO Fund? “ensure connectivity in bordering parts of our country” - God why? To fund Ajmal Kasabs??
India Knowledge@Wharton: It’s widely accepted that the telecom sector’s success was a huge deal in India. It has made available to a lot of people services that they ordinarily wouldn’t have been able to get otherwise. What are the factors that contributed to that success?
Pilot: When we first started off with mobile telephones in India in the early 1990s, it was prohibitively expensive. The handsets were expensive and the call rates were very expensive. I am happy to say today that we have one of the cheapest call rates in the world. Our call rates average $0.01 to $0.02 a minute, which is the lowest in the world. The handsets have become much cheaper because the economies of scale have made sure that there is enough competition and, even though the margins are less, it’s a volume business now. People have really taken to mobile telephoning and our tele-density today is more than 50%, as opposed to 1.5% in 1995, so there has been a huge leapfrog in our connectivity through mobile telephones. Because the call rates going down so low, because of the availability of the infrastructure and people realizing how mobile connectivity is able to [help] their businesses [and make] their interactions much more effective and much more efficient … people … have taken to it very keenly.
Apart from “economies of scale”, is there any sense to it?
India Knowledge@Wharton: What is the one untold success story from India?
Pilot: I think there are a lot of successes and also a lot of challenges we faced, but in the last five or six years we’ve been able to really focus on the priorities that the Indian people wanted us to focus on. We’ve [instituted] a law known as the Right to Information Act. People have a right to know [about] all transactions of the government [and that] has made the whole governance of India very open and transparent. We’ve had a compulsory employment guarantee scheme in India, the first of its kind anywhere in the world, that [says for] every able bodied person in one family; one person will get 100 days of [work] guaranteed by law. I think these are fundamental path-breaking resolutions that we have passed in our government. We are working on a bill that ensures food security for all Indian citizens. We got a Right to Education bill passed. These are basic things that should have been done some time ago but India never had the wealth and the economic strength to implement some of these hugely expensive programs….
RTI, Employment Guarantee are all well-told, no? They asked for “untold success story”!! Dude, how did you finish your assignments?
India Knowledge@Wharton: What does the telecom sector look like in 2015 and how do you get there?
Pilot: That’s difficult to say because the telecom sector changes very month, if not every week, [but] I think the landscape looks pretty bright. I think there is enough competition. We still have a hunger for connectivity, it’ll go on for a few years, but the challenge like I said to you earlier, is the urban connectivity. Urban Delhi density is 140% — that means we have 140 phone lines for [every] 100 people in Delhi, Kolkata, Bombay — but in the rural areas it’s 20%. So there is a mismatch there but we need to fix that. Even the private operators now realize that there is money to be made in the rural markets so they’re all, after having saturated the big cities, now pushing towards the smaller towns and villages, which again I think is a good thing. So I think the Indian telecom sector is bound to grow. We will have many more value added services. We are looking at ways of exploring mobile banking, for example. We have our 3G auctions going on right now [and] then you’ll have video conferencing, live television, all of those things one never thought of 10 years ago. It’s an ever changing world and I think it will only bear fruits for the Indian society and the Indian economy.
One honest answer finally - but “I do not know!” would have been better than all these statements!! Did you notice the “Delhi Density” again there?? ;-))
I rest my case!!
