3rd April

Spectrum policy in focus

The article talks about the TDSAT judgement regarding the spectrum policy of TRAI towards the existing and new operators. It also talks about improving the spectrum allocation policy and providing a wider spectrum for Indian operators as well like in the West.

In reply to GSM operators’ petition regarding allocation of GSM spectrum to CDMA operators, the TDSAT said that GSM operators have no ‘vested rights’ to receive spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz and also questioned TRAI for not suggesting a cap for number of operators in a circle. Although it criticizes TRAI on its subscriber base criteria for spectrum allocation, it supported DoT in adopting the same. If an operator wants a spectrum beyond 6.2 MHz it is unfair to deny him just because there in no policy for that. Instead a premium should be collected from the operator to reflect the spectrum scarcity and enable efficient use of spectrum. Since auction is not possible to allot extra spectrum, company valuations in the last round should be used as benchmark. For start-ups, their valuations would be the proxy prices for spectrum. On a long run, the money earned from the spectrum allocation should be used up to free up more spectrums. The average spectrum available to operators in other countries is 25 MHz. Thus Indian operators must be availed the spectrum of at least 15 MHz. 

While digitization would free up lot of spectrum, sharing could also be considered a good option since mesh technology has made it possible and currently experimented with.

Inchoate Front

The article talks about the unclear vision of the Third Front that can be a major hurdle for it to remain a stable coalition at the center or even off the center. 

NCP Chief Sharad Pawar had no dithering in revealing his PM ambitions when he heightened the speculation of its possible coalition with TF, although his party is currently a part of UPA at the center. But despite projecting itself as a clear alternative to non-Congress non-BJP government at the centre and even dreaming of latter’s dependency on them for forming coalitions, the absence of a core ideology to hold all the TF parties together is their major problem. Besides just being ‘secular and pro-people’, there has to be some core political and developmental agenda to form a viable front. While CPI(M) has been trying hard to forge a national and secular alternative to the Congress party, the lack of core ideology is preventing itself to become a stable and long term coalition.

In the current scenario, with diverse agendas, personal ambitions of the constituent parties and internal tussle due to various interest groups provide enough ground for cynicism.

Normal is an aberration

The article talks about the increasing medicalization of human condition since we see these days that for every human condition there is a term in a medical science ending with the word ‘syndrome’. 

In olden times when most of the human conditions were considered perfectly normal, it’s not like that anymore. Children who are naughty, energetic but distracted in olden days were not much of a cause of concern as it is today. Today they are thought to be suffering from a disease called ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). In olden days when wise parenting and school supervision was remedy for such children, that has been replaced by medical prescription and psychotherapy besides special diet, megavitamins, “attention training”, body treatments and even chiropractic sessions. The reason is believed to be pharma companies since medicines would only be sold when there would be diseases. Discovery of new diseases lead to more R&D and thus further more diseases discovered. However, a part of blame also goes to people who illogically accept anything that is told to them. Their expectation for their child to be perfect rather then natural drags them to assume that their child is suffering from a disorder every single moment. 

The best cure to this would be to use a little common sense but the question is can we resist the urge to hope for the worst?