When Ramvilas Paswan was minister for communications, he constituted Telephone Advisory Committees (TAC) up to the district level. These committees staffed scores of nondescript officials. They enjoyed many perks including rent-free and call charge-free telephones, and their main concern was to extract contracts from DOT/BSNL for digging trenches and laying cables. They would also get postings and transfers done for telecom employees, for a consideration of course.

Later, when Pramod Mahajan became the minister, all these committees were dissolved with the hope that there would be an end to the inglorious institution of TACs. Sukhram had also constituted advisory committees for allotment of STD/ISD public telephone booths. Many members of the TAC and the public telephone booth committees made good money.

It is astounding that Pramod Mahajan has reconstituted TACs and that too at the district level—exactly the way Paswan did.

There is no need for these committees when the waiting lists for telephones have become much shorter. In fact, customers are being solicited, canvassed and given incentives to take phones. Moreover, BSNL is now a corporation and not a department of the government. It is supposed to be having managerial and business autonomy. It is in competition with scores of private telephone companies, several of them, in every state. But private companies do not have any TACs. Why should BSNL alone be saddled with these TACs? Is it because PSUs like BSNL and MTNL are supposed to serve the interests of ministers and the political parties in power and allow them to distribute largesse to members of these committees? Only recently the country has seen the Parliament being rocked by petrol-pump allotment scams, but we seem to forget everything and learn anything.

It can very deleterious to saddle BSNL alone with TACs, with large number of members in every district. Telephone services are being provided not only by BSNL and MTNL but also by their new competitors—the private companies. Maybe TRAI can appoint national- and state-level consumer councils that have jurisdiction not only over the services of the PSUs, namely BSNL and MTNL, but also over every other telecom and information service provider.

The councils’ concern should be that every type of service is available in every area on a nondiscriminatory basis, the prices are fair, and the quality-of-service (QoS) conforms to pre-defined standards. There can be independent agencies for measurement of QoS, appraisal and publication. The consumer councils should be financially assisted by TRAI so that they can carry out independent surveys and be armed with authentic statistical data. These councils should knowledgeably involve in the consultation process of TRAI. TRAI is registering telecom user bodies but it has not yet started giving them the necessary assistance and the information to make them powerful countervailing forces in relation to service supplier companies.

Finally, let me assert that in the light of my more than 35 years of service in the telecom department and in the light of my experience in handling TACs, I find that there can be no worthwhile contribution of TACs. They have always been pressure groups more concerned with getting free telephones for themselves and out-of-turn telephones for their clients. The foisting of TACs on BSNL and MTNL not only unjustified but a needless interference with the autonomy and business decisions of these PSUs.

TACs will only become millstones round the necks of PSUs. It is the TRAI and consumer councils, which can together make the telcos more accountable, responsive and transparent to consumers and government.

The Author is adviser, (IT), Govt of AP