I am, of course, connecting the flooding of Malwa to the mauling of Dayanidhi Maran by his own party. And I am of course connecting those 32 pending Barmer BSNL towers to the infamous GSM tender business. Like me, most of my colleagues couldn’t be bothered who negotiated what price for the contract. What matters to us is that the decision was taken, and we looked forward to its implementation. The network would expand, more area would come under coverage, and the villager would benefit by better communication facilities. It isn’t readily understood, but there is a direct correlation between expanding telephony and the declining importance of krishi mandis. The farmer with a telephone gets to inquire and negotiate directly with the buyer. So for a government that swears by the village and its welfare, the Government of India and its bizarre partners have been strangely silent about allowing this BSNL tender business to reach this stage.

In their long march to the power corridors of Delhi, the comrades have always ridden on the backs of various public sector units. By any stretch of the imagination BSNL must rank as one of the best managed PSUs. So when the Bolsheviks keep silent while a UPA constituent lets rip into BSNL, its GSM tender and its global image, there is more than merely the smell of hilsa to this murky business. Imagination does not require a great leap forward to get a handle on this.

As an economics-challenged parliamentarian I need only repeat figures that are easily understood by me, and those like me. When the tender business reached its logical conclusion, BSNL ranked as the second largest service provider in the country. Many of its 21 circles were virtually jammed, but it did suggest hope. But as the tender took care of its minister, and since then stopped BSNL in its tracks, the great PSU has slipped to fourth in the national list. While all have shown double-digit growth in this period, BSNL has barely made it to a single digit.

... contd.