Spaced out policy

Lessons to be drawn from the Antrix-Devas controversy

The left hand of the Union government does not seem to know what the right hand does! The responses of the department of space, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Antrix and the Prime Minister’s Office to the observations made by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) on the merits of the Antrix-Devas transponder deal have left everyone confused. While different arms of the government have been saying different things, the firm concerned, Devas, has been blowing hot and cold, first saying that the deal had been signed and sealed and averring, though not promising, that it could take legal recourse in case of cancellation and then declaring that it was open to renegotiation. The first point that emerges from this chain of events is that if there is anything worse than doing something wrong, then it is fumbling in response to allegation of wrongdoing. That can create the impression of culpability even when there may have been none. In this age of instant communication and in India’s current supercharged atmosphere, crises have to be responded to and effectively handled on the run. To fall down on that score can become an issue of survival.

The second point is that though the Space Commission appears to have second thoughts on the deal, ISRO has not acted on it. The innocent can be forgiven for thinking that the two entities do not communicate well with each other. As it happens, both are headed by the same person! Though the Space Commission includes some of the senior-most functionaries of the Union government, it can become difficult for the same person to wear one hat to approve a deal and another to annul it. It is high time the three positions held concurrently by the secretary, Department of Space, are now manned separately in the interest of transparency, arms length functioning and embedding a system of checks and balances. Now that India’s space programme is maturing, an analogy can be used from the world of business to argue that the positions of chairman of the board (policymaking) should be separated from that of CEO (execution).

Two specific points need making. One is the CAG’s grouse that a lot of ISRO’s procurement is done without going through the process of open tendering with wide participation. Commercialisation of space technology is still very much work in progress. In the present case, two other firms had signed MoUs with ISRO for the same kind of business but had not followed through. Devas did, having mastered the technology. There should ideally be tendering and auctioning of scarce resources but that can happen only when multiple firms show interest. The principle of lowest bidder cannot work in new technology development. Second, Devas is right to make the distinction between spectrum and transponders. These are not just apples and oranges, but apples and fish, as Kiran Karnik has said. Third, Devas is, in fact, paying more than other users of transponders like DTH carriers. The government has not till now been technology agnostic in the pricing of a scarce resource like spectrum. In wireless telephony, it has treated GSM and CDMA differently, though both use the same spectrum, the latter more efficiently. Commercially pricing a scarce resource irrespective of end use and technology at play is a bridge the country is yet to cross.