Rajeev Chandrasekhar at the EXPRESS

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•P. VAIDYANATHAN IYER: I don’t think Rajeev needs any introduction. He was one of the pioneers of India’s telecom revolution in the early 1990s. Now, as Rajya Sabha member, his interests range from urban development to managing inflation. I request him to start with what’s occupying his mind these days as the President of the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry. This can then follow with questions.

Thanks for inviting me. It’s a bit unusual as I’m not usually invited to these forums — so I don’t know whether I’m popular or not. In early 2007, when I had been an MP only for a year, I was asked what the biggest threat to India’s growth was. Unhesitatingly, I said it was politics, for which I was severely criticised. The point I was trying to make then and what I still believe is that politics can be disruptive as well as enabling. A politician’s lack of focus on specific issues is today the biggest threat to the country’s growth. Our institutions of governance pose a challenge in our path to becoming a hypercompetitive and efficient economy. We see what is happening today, with the slightest hint of inflation. We have a less than confident picture of the PM and FM making statements in Parliament accusing people of cartelisation, talking about price fixing, and still being unable to do anything apart from requesting for price reduction. This is what has gone wrong with institutional organs of the government — we have autonomous organisations, regulators, laws that give power to these entities, but there is limited oversight as we do not ask these institutions the questions we should.

•P. VAIDYANATHAN IYER: What does one do when politicians and ministers look at regulatory bodies as their own turf?

Independent regulators and autonomous bodies were created and have been enacted by Parliament to be independent of the political and administrative executive. If an independent regulator is not to report to a minister or secretary, who is it reporting to? What is the oversight mechanism that is envisaged in the concept of an independent regulator? People haven’t realised that Parliament has a legislative role of enacting law, and more importantly, the role of overseeing the executive. A parliamentary committee model is in place to question a regulator about its actions. However, as the regulatory oversight mechanism is not working, people will do what they have to do. As the regulator is not accountable to anybody, it can get away by saying it is only accountable to Parliament, which — being an MP — I frankly don’t think is a great place to be reporting in to.

•RISHI RAJ: You talked about cartelisation, about companies raising prices at one go. Car companies have been raising and cutting prices together. Last year telecom companies did the same with tariffs. We see the same thing happening in steel and cement sectors. Should the government intervene every time?

In my opinion, the government should not intervene. It’s not an issue for the PM or FM to be talking about. If we are a free market economy and if the industry sees a shortage, they will do what investors do — exploit it. That is the very nature of a free economy and free market. There is an institutional intervention mechanism that has been built into system — the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission (MRTPC) or Competition Commission. The institutional role of the MRTPC role is to ensure that there is no market behaviour akin to a monopoly. . . I have all along contended that the regulatory framework is falling behind the increased sophistication of market players.

•CITHARA PAUL: Has your perception of Indian politics, or rather, Indian politicians, changed after your Rajya Sabha experience?

My perception of politics was dictated a lot by what appeared in the media before 2006. I hated them as much as all of you. But I have met some of the finest, smartest thinkers after joining politics. And I am saying this not to give any carte blanche to politicians. People like Sharad Joshi. I didn’t even know about the caste system in the Muslim community. There is a gentleman called Ali Anwar from whom I learnt a lot about this. About Karnataka, for example, when I campaigned for my election, I used to hang around the Vidhan Sabha and I met people who can’t have a conversation in English but had wisdom and knowledge that made you humble. I continue to maintain today that my first day in Parliament was like going to school.

•VANDITA MISHRA: The general impression about Karnataka is it is a state where corruption or criminalisation of politics is not as serious a problem as let’s say it is in Uttar Pradesh. It’s not just a north-south divide that’s peculiar to Karnataka. What do you think that is?

I agree with you. I can tell you from first hand experience. I think that the political class in Karnataka — notwithstanding the bad press that Deve Gowda gets — at the end of the day is genuinely concerned about their constituency and they have worked very hard for it. And I have seen that even for MPs (from Karnataka, who are here in Delhi) that there is a whole work ethic for them. Now why it happens, I don’t know. Because there is definitely a trend in Karnataka, which I haven’t compared with other states, where MLAs repeat. Anti-incumbency in MLAs is lower. There are people in BJP today who were MLAs in Congress and so on. So obviously, there’s something they are doing right.

•AMBREEN KHAN: What’s your take on the forthcoming Karnataka elections?

I think Karnataka elections are very interesting and let me give you a disclosure: we have a commercial interest in a media channel. So what I give you is there official house line. It is for the first time in Karnataka that BJP has been trying to position a campaign or a manifesto around a man, who happens to be a Lingayat. And they are doing that assuming that they can cut through all the normal caste equations. I’m not convinced that that will happen.

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