"Telecom which was the golden goose that was having lakhs of crore in its kitty, today has only INR 1,000 crore and is in debt of INR 2.50 lakh crore' said that Mr Kapil Sibal, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, who was speaking at a session on "The Governance Conundrum: Is it Law or Enforcement?' at the Annual General Meeting and National Conference of the Confederation of Indian Industry.
Mr Sibal said that everybody underwent a process of learning and evolution when the IT and Telecom sector was opened up in the early 90s. This was inevitable in any sector which was virgin and where the size of industry, both public and private, was small. Decisions were bound to be taken in an ad hoc manner since there were no precedents to follow. Similar he said that was going to be the case with power and coal.
Answering a question on whether the recent audit reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General had resulted in bureaucrats delaying taking decisions, Mr Sibal said it was true that this had led to the entire system virtually coming to a halt. Not just bureaucrats, he said that he himself was afraid of taking decisions as he was not sure if 10 years down the line there was going to be a court case questioning his motives.
Blaming the duality of the system, structural issues of authority and difficulties in implementing legislations in a country of the size of 1.2 billion people, Mr Sibal said that no 1 law was good enough to answer the multifarious problems of various states and regions of the country. Giving the example of the Right to Education Act, which was made a law during his tenure as the Minister for Human Resource Development in 2010, Mr Sibal said that every state had its own issues with implementing it in the right spirit while some had too many teachers who did not qualify as per the new rules to be teachers and did not know what to do with them, others had issues of infrastructure.
Reconciling positions between Centre and states, in such cases, he said that was difficult.
Laying emphasis on a collaborative approach to policy making and implementation, he said that if implementation was not right it could end up alienating people.
Suggesting the use of technology to reduce human intervention, Mr Sibal said that the Electronic Delivery Service Bill was committed to delivering all public service electronically by 2020. Criminal justice system was one area where technology could play a huge role.