Letters: Price points

It is surprising that the economic importance of keeping the cost of infrastructure low for the sake of the people is still lost on our planners (“Telecom shares plunge on spectrum fear,” April 24). China is the manufacturing epicentre because its land, water, power and transport don’t suffer from predatory taxation or benchmarking, and the economy benefits from this competitiveness. In the US, the price of energy is low and adjusted by purchasing power parity. An Indian consumer, on the other hand, pays almost 40 times of what an American consumer pays.

If the government wants economic activity to thrive in an increasingly globalised environment, its singular focus needs to be on keeping the infrastructure cost low at a break-even level. The government could also consider subsidising the sector indirectly so it can earn revenues from the resultant economic activities. The move to treat the telecom sector like a revenue stream to offset the Budget deficit is as harebrained as it gets.

Gopi Gopalakrishnan New Delhi

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