Soumayan Dutta, Sukalpo Saha, Kaustuv Ganguly, Subhro Kundu | Sept 22, 2022 | Published Online
Till this far, we have only outlined some of the glaring issues that capitalism or “free market” proponents bring to the foreground, and how it is historically fallacious for environmental sustainability in the global south context.
In this final part, we are going to present a case study of India to provide some understanding of the government-corporate nexus and how it perpetuates to extract the natural resources and by-passes the responsibilities of any welfare state.
A long time ago, we made a “tryst with destiny”, and it’s well past the time we should have redeemed our pledge of “wiping off every tear from every eye”, at least for the poorest and vulnerable section, for whom a climate catastrophe is more dangerous.
After 75 years and one Amrit Kaal of independence later, we stand as a nation divided in terms of caste, class, political, social and economic conditions. The rampage that has been unleashed upon the public in the form of corporate-friendly governance since the time of economic liberalisation has scaled unprecedented heights in the past few years. An unfathomably steady stream of accumulation of wealth and resources is furthering India to inch towards an oligarchy – much like any post-Soviet countries like Russian Federation, or so to speak, the “transition economies” which were part of the dreams of the “Washington Consensus”.
Rampant selling of profit-making PSUs, and dirt-cheap valuation of government-owned enterprises and companies is pushing the majority of the working class into a ‘new’ India – jobless, stagflation-hit; India which is poorer than the day before. An India whose every nook and corner is up for sale.
It feels as if the much-needed struggle for Jal-Jangal-Zameen, that is, the right of the people over the public resources, is a never-ending one. It also feels like the moment of independence from the colonisers was nothing but a brief interregnum.
Despite best efforts from its people, the view of the governance in India continues and loves to strike a fruitful bargain with the practice of auctioning natural assets and expresses a new-found love for the post-liberalisation era oligarchic-capitalism hyper-market. By Oligarchic, we refer to a set of enterprises or firms who control the price of the economy and therefore distort the process of acquiring resources.
Unfortunately, even if those inputs are public resources, these oligarchies are such a place where if one is not paying, one is the show.
In our last piece on Indian Researchers’ series on environmental change and its impact on the large mass of poorer sections, we attempt to bring out illustrations of how the promises of a welfare state are in beating a retreat and how the questions of climate justice can be bypassed in the name of profit-making.
Illustration: 5G Spectrum in India
Background
Since the advent of wireless cellular technology, our lives have changed rapidly. The increasing popularity of 1G cellular tech paved the way for a digital transformation – the introduction of 2G and 2.5G cells. In the world of communication, the rollout of 2G wireless was no less a revolution than the discovery of radio frequency itself. To be honest, India was a bit behind some of the other countries in the developing world in catching up with the rest of the world in the race.
Our familiarity with 2G mostly limits us to the infamous 2G-gate that rocked the foundation of the then UPA-II government, led by Congress. Since then, it has apparently been a relatively smooth-sailing journey for the telecom industry throughout 3G and 3.5G roll-out. Besides a state-owned carrier BSNL, we had multiple private players out in the market – Hutch (later Vodafone), Airtel, Tata Docomo, Idea, and Aircel to name a few.
The nexus of government-corporate alliance would soon change once Reliance Industries decided to enter the market. With a mammoth investment of almost Rs. 96000 crores in building fully owned infrastructure alone, deep pocket, well-cooked market research.
Reliance Jio truly arrived as a disruptor and their arrival was questionably well-timed with an auction cycle by the Government of India in 2016. In the auction of 2016, the state-owned carrier BSNL backed out because of its feeble financial health. We all know that story: how a constant decline in public investment has caused the sorry state that BSNL has plunged to today. However, although only 40% of the total spectrum bandwidth put up for auction was sold [1], BSNL was still denied the opportunity to immediately roll out 4G and stay realistically competitive in the telecom market.
Jio, on the other hand, played out the so-called first mover’s advantage like no one else and went on to corner more than 35% market share in just 6 years [2]. With its lucrative trial period offers, Reliance Jio’s popularity soared. And the Indian telecom market suddenly felt the shock of transitioning into an oligopoly from being at least a competitive market among the few enterprises – inching towards a monopoly. Many private carriers made their way in the process.
Since then, Reliance Jio’s data plans have only gotten dearer. From being 0.2 paise/GB as of September 1, 2016 [3], it might cost you as high as 13.5 paise/GB today – an increase of almost 7 times. This is the menace of monopoly capitalism. Reliance Jio and Bharti Airtel together enjoy a market share of 67% – against a meagre 10% by the state carrier BSNL. In such a skewed and vulnerable telecom scenario, India prepares to enter the 5G arena – the most coveted, truly next-generation evolution of cellular technology. We would now show how privatisation of this air spectrum would eventually use the public resource to build a profit-making venture, looting almost two third of the population in India.
5G – Technical background to Auction
Technically speaking, 5G is not just another cellular technology. It needs a whole new infrastructure – starting from cell towers to antennae design, a new paradigm of transmission to the introduction of connected cars and homes. For sure, 5G will enable us to see an unprecedented scale of data speed, so much so that it might blur the line between cellular communication and the internet. The entire 5G spectrum can be divided up into two sub-spectrums – Sub-6GHz bands and greater than 6-GHz bands. As a matter of fact, the Government of India has put only one > 6GHz band – 26GHz for auction which is capable of transmitting lightning-fast data via mmWave. The catch lies in the fact that signal strength drastically falls in higher frequency bands; hence, more and more cell towers are needed to cover a region. On the other hand, for low-end spectrum (less than 1GHz), the signal strength is a non-factor as it can pass through almost any object – thus enabling excellent indoor coverage. This will require the telecom service provider to spend less on building supporting infrastructure such as cell towers, antennae etc. – making the low-end spectrum more lucrative than others. In figure 1, we can observe how Jio has cornered the entire low-end spectrum by acquiring more than 70% of low-end bands – creating a monopoly in those spectrums. As a result, the other private players in the market are squeezed out to scamper for the remaining few bands. Bottomline, Reliance Jio is set to be accessible to the lion’s share of users in India – putting the company in a very dangerously advantageous position not just to become a market dictator but may also hold the key to bargain against regulatory authorities like TRAI and eventually forcing the latter to cede ground in case of a dispute.
Figure 1: Reliance Jio cornering low band spectrum
Source: Ministry of telecom, Government of India
Now, the lesson learnt from history always tells us to be afraid of a monopoly/oligopolistic markets. Reliance Jio is not very different as well. Over the period of last 5-6 years, supposingly “cheap” data have gone more and more expensive. Let’s admit it, impressively improved streaming services from platforms like YouTube, Hotstar, Netflix etc. and even Instagram/Facebook reels consume significant amount of data. During the period of Covid, we have seen demand for smartphone and high-speed data services go up for all the legitimate reasons – shifting classrooms to mobile phones and creating the great Indian digital divide.
More demand means less and less efficient data speed, more buffering, poorer quality of service – but all these at an increased cost at the user’s end. Reliance Jio, the market disruptor is now the trend-setter for hiking prices almost exorbitantly.
Reliance Jio emerged as the highest bidder in the last concluded 5G spectrum auction- shelling out more than Rs. 1L Crores. The entire rural market of India is set to be catered via the low band spectrum – where Jio is unopposedly the dominant player. A fear of further classic wealth accumulation at the expense of the less privileged in a monopoly market cannot be alienated at all. Interesting thing is, the government has allowed the telecom companies to pay the amount in 20 equal annual instalments![4] Amidst the high inflation rate, this clinically woven government-corporate nexus is designed to squeeze out money from the aam aadmi, and fill in the coffers of oligarchs.
Figure 2: Amount spent by each bidder in an oligopoly telecom market. An inevitable march towards a complete monopoly.
Source: Ministry of telecom, Government of India
Figure 3: Reliance Jio cornering the market by acquiring the right to use parts of all spectrums with a focus on low end bands.
Source: Ministry of telecom, Government of India
A Few more Anecdotal Illustrations
As much as our ruling dispensation would like to boast about their Deshbhakti, we care far less about what makes India our “Desh” – its abundant natural resources and the people centric plans to make use of those resources in a sustainable manner.
Another illustration would be to examine how toxic industrial wastes, human faeces, open sewage water – everything finds its way into Ganges and its tributaries as the final resting place.
Especially the upper stream of Ganga, cradle of the most densely populated region of India, is victim to unprecedented levels of pollution by each passing day. There has been change in governments, and policies too. Lakhs of crores are spent in the name of Ganga Action Plans, Namami Gange and other mouthful projects. Mostly ghats have been beautified, nice pavements and amusement parks have come up by the side, but the core problem of environmental degradation and ecological destruction have not been addressed at all. Rather, corporate friendly tweaks in environmental preservation acts have made the industries less and less accountable towards the mayhem they are causing. And not only in the northern part of India, the story pans out to be similar in almost every other part of India. A crucial example would be from Karnataka,what started off as the city of lakes, Bengaluru – now gets inundated with one day of rain. The land sharks’ greed and rampant constructions across the city and its fringes over the water bodies has left the city almost unlivable.
Deliberate and continuous Constitutional amendments are being done to facilitate forced evacuation of the adivasis in Deucha Pachami coal excavation project in Birbhum of West Bengal is a prime example of that [5]. The rights of tribes living there are being trampled upon at the behest of West Bengal government’s autocratic whims. Expressions of interest by the Adanis in the project will definitely raise eyebrows since the latter is infamous for its collusion with highest level office holders of any pro-corporate government.
The coal industry itself is quite notorious in terms of not following recommended industry standards for workers’ safety. A shameful fact is that there’s little to no coverage for treatment by any insurance companies for a deadly disease – silicosis, a common ailment amongst the lowest rung of mine workers. An industry, which is not worker-oriented, is bound to match an inevitable doom.
Perhaps, a little less discussed industry, the tourism sector of India is also suffering from reckless and unplanned growth in certain regions.
As a matter of fact, the Himalayan region is hit with waste management and air pollution problems at an unprecedented level. The Kedarnath tragedy of 2013 was the result of such encroachment on the hillside, always deemed as a hazardous place to set up hotels and businesses. Yet the Devbhoomi government or the Himachal government has moved at a snail’s pace to improve the transport infrastructure or sizable waste management system.
Figure 4: Comparison between waste management between IHR* and Non IHR state
Source: Annual Report 2020-21, Central pollution control board
*IHR – Indian Himalayan Region
With an uncontrolled and mostly informally arranged industrial planning, levels of ecological imbalance increased as the number of private vehicles entering into the forests and hills of Himalaya had exploded. So much so that, Shimla now sees a regular traffic jam amidst unusual temperature rise.
One must remember, these regions could maintain and sustain, albeit in poverty, a large section of Indian masses. The ecological destruction here is not about the romantic view of the Himalayas, but of the sustainable lives that every citizen was ensured in our constitution.
Greed and gratification being the driving force of the corporate-government nexus therefore eye washes the anti environmental policies of the current ruling party. Along with that a systematic suppression of dissident voices have started tolling bells for sustainable growth and development.
The people’s voice to save the ecological balance of this country, requires careful and scientific intervention.
Unfortunately, we are far away from the promises of any such kind.
Acknowledgement
We sincerely thank Soham Bhattacharya and Debodeep Banerjee for their valuable feedback in order to produce this piece of work.
References
[1] https://www.medianama.com/2016/10/223-2016-spectrum-auctions-ends/
[6]Annual Report 2020-21, Central pollution control board
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