My colleague Rajesh Jain has an opinion piece in the University of Pennsylvania publication Knowledge@Wharton on the Indian telecom scam. The editorial introduction to the piece says, “Since telecom is an industry that links backward and forward to several others, the total economic cost could well be hundreds of billions of dollars. This scandal shows that corruption has deep roots in Indian society, but informed voters and the democratic process can help eradicate it, argues Rajesh Jain, managing director of Mumbai-based Netcore Solutions, in this opinion piece. Jain, a member of the India Knowledge@Wharton Advisory Board, blogs every day at http://emergic.org.” Here are a few extended excerpts from it, for the record.
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The Indian media is much in the news these days. It is becoming increasingly clear that media bigwigs and politicians work hand in glove to defraud the public. That’s not really news since a moment’s reflection reveal why that makes sense. What’s also been amply clear to some is that the media have been the flag bearers of pseudo-secularism. Here’s a fine example from a report published today in Headlines India.
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[Previously in the series: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.]

Radio spectrum is a very special kind of stuff. It was entirely worthless not too long ago. Now it is not only an extremely valuable resource but it is nearly impossible to properly price. The price continues to increase with advances in science and technology. There are two broad generalization I make. First, that the more advanced an economy is, the more important the use of radio spectrum becomes. Second, the more efficiently the radio spectrum is used, the more advanced the economy becomes. In short, a virtuous cycle exists between spectrum use and economic growth. Therefore mistakes in the use and allocation of spectrum can have far-reaching consequences with damages that are impossible to estimate.
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