Articles by T H Chowdary

The article by J V Deshpande (EPW, December 2, 2000) exposed the nexus between the AICTE and politicians, not a day too soon. If at all, his account of the AICTE’s working is mild. Fifteen years ago, when the AICTE was legislated, there could have been some justification for it. There were less than about 500 engineering colleges then. It is only after India gave up the bureaucrat-dictated, politicianpostulated, socialistic centralised control of every human endeavour that there has been a growing demand for engineering, business management and computer applications education. Governments and universities are in no position to undertake the massive expansion that is required in our university education, especially in the professions of engineering, medicine, business management and computers. 

I refer to your editorial comment of August 26, ‘Telecom: Groping towards a Unified Market’. While generally appreciating the content, I find the comment that the licence fees are not too onerous at 12 per cent, 10 per cent and 8 per cent of gross revenues not very acceptable.

To make the telephone service affordable to ever larger sections of our people, our policies must encourage the adoption by competing providers of technologies they judge to be most cost effective. The licensors and the government must, further, not impose external costs unrelated to the business.

The prime purpose of a regulator is to defend and promote consumer choice, welfare and quality of service. The Telecom Users Group of India has made recommendations for an independent and effective telecom regulator.