Newsmaker: Rahul Khullar

Better sorry than safe

The year was 2010. India was sitting on 60 million tonnes of food grain, although it was required to maintain only 21 million tonnes as buffer. An argument had broken out between those who felt the ban on grain export should be lifted, and those who believed it shouldn't.

The case for export was strong. After a few successive years of good crops, India was flush with grain while a drought was being predicted in the wheat granaries of the world: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Russia. But a stubborn procurement policy and the fear of the unknown was preventing India from making a killing in the international market. The government had become the biggest hoarder of food grain and was dictating market prices.

Rahul Khullar, then commerce secretary, had only one mission at the time: to somehow knock some sense into the government's head and to make it believe that rather than letting grain rot, it was better to sell it, even give it away in return for some goodwill. Khullar argued energetically at a meeting of a Group of Ministers that the ban on exports be lifted. Others could see the warning signs, but Khullar ignored them: then Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee's face became redder and redder. The explosion was not long coming. "Sell, sell, all you think about is selling. Why are you turning India into a trader nation?" Mukherjee roared at Khullar. You could have heard a pin drop. The only person who came to Khullar's defence was Deputy Chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia. "He is Commerce Secretary. What else do you expect him to say?" said Ahluwalia mildly.

Undeterred, Khullar spoke up reiterating the logic of export. But by the time the government saw the sense in what he was saying and decided to export a small quantity, international prices had dropped from $350 a tonne to $250.

Others might have opted to stay quiet, preferring to be safe rather than sorry. But not Khullar. He wouldn't mind being sorry but not when the other option is to be safe.

Khullar once told this reporter that anyone, any bureaucrat no matter how smart, could make a mistake. It was doing nothing, for fear of making a mistake, which was unforgivable. He articulated this belief in the foreword to the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI)'s latest report on the valuation and pricing of spectrum which, among other things, suggests a steep 40-60 per cent cut in spectrum prices. Khullar's remarks come on the back of a raging controversy on the Comptroller and Auditor General's observation on valuation of spectrum and is at the heart of the spectrum allocation scam. Khullar says: "The Authority is no soothsayer; it is impossible to predict what the value (price) of spectrum would be 5 or 10 years from now, much less 20 years hence, the terminal date for a spectrum licence. In fact, valuations 5 to 10 years forward may be far higher than today's estimates. Trying to estimate a price, say a 2023 valuation, for spectrum, would be foolhardy. Worse yet, even if it could be done accurately, who would be willing to buy spectrum at 2023 (estimated) prices in today's auction?" He goes on to say: "The driving consideration throughout this paper has been Carveth Read's observation that: 'It is better to be vaguely right rather than exactly wrong'".

Khullar isn't afraid of anyone and believes most civil servants are cut from the same cloth. He was with the Delhi government when the chief minister tried to pressurise him to rig sales tax cases. He refused. As commerce secretary, his predecessor GK Pillai recorded his objection to a coal import tender via traders who were politically well connected. Pillai moved out and Khullar got signals that it would be in his interest to reverse Pillai's observations. He investigated and recorded additional grounds to reject the bid.

Irascible but always ready to listen, Khullar believes a civil servant must never lose sight of his client: the little guy. The evil men are those who are decision-makers but abdicate their responsibility of taking decisions, leading people to lose confidence in public institutions. He believes that as virtues go, it is credibility that has a price above rubies.