Lokpal Bill has gathered dust for over past 8-9 lok sabha sessions. The basic premise is that there ought to be an accountability in the system as an ombudsman to overlook any complaints. The past three months have been stormy for some because the biggies have been caught in the vortex of corruption. However, there is much more than this that meets the eye.

I usually refrain from making any political posts here because this is not the right platform. However, I do assume that readers have some basic iota of knowledge about polity and make genuine efforts to seek out information. Admittedly, the blog roll has been trimmed down over the past few months but is an enough indication to seek news from alternative sources. Hence, I also rely heavily on different opinions to balance out the events as they unfold or else the media, in cahoots with the powers, is able to pull wool over the eyes.

As I have mentioned earlier, one of the major limitations of blogs is it’s discovery of content. Unless, it is spread far and wide, it would remain hidden. A vast legion and an army of morons descends on Twitter and Facebook which makes an engaging discussion, nearly impossible. I do miss the earlier interaction with like minded folks on the forums but right now it is swamped with idiots; the same ones who shouldn’t have populated the earth in the first place.

Nevertheless, first the 2G scam. It was actually “unleashed” by Congress as a careful calculated move to deflect attention from Commonwealth Games fiasco and overt attention from Gandhis who have actually benefitted from the windfall. It is not possible to point in the exact figure but we can be assured that it is a tidy sum stashed away in havens and far from the public scrutiny. Another calculated move was to discredit the ruling DMK regime and force them on the backfoot for poll understandings and fine tune CBI to extract maximum political mileage. When it was clear that this has not ensured the required “effect” i.e. people rising in revolt, Raja was held and packed away to Tihar Jail.

Although, it sounds like a conspiracy theory, any political observer worth his/her salt would not deny the way events unfolded. In a place like Tamil Nadu, where Congress by itself would not have been able to make any dent (given it’s near absence and lack of charisma in Southern States), DMK is still the best bet. So after wresting the key seat sharing agreement, DMK and Congress are still in the alliance and would face the electorate together. It’s surprising, that despite the “North Indian’s face” in North, it is aligning itself with a party that has steadfastly kept “anti north indian” stance. In short, regional chauvinism reigns surpreme and no one questions them.

This was later followed by a stalled parliament with a constitution of a PAC and a JPC; statuatory bodies under Parliament of India which is oddly making some news off and on and was agreed to after supposedly considerable lobbying efforts by the opposition. It’s wisdom may well be questioned; as far as I am aware of, it is a fact finding mission but does not prosecute. This again has ensured that public attention is deflected away from the massive commonwealth games fiasco; there is no iota of doubt that Kalmadi and his team are mere fronts for people in power to siphon off public money.

Now comes the “lokpal bill” and the balding gandhian asshole called as Hazare. The timing of his plank as “anti-corruption” is a huge suspect. But first, a reality check on the lokpal bill or what has been offered to the Government:

Jan Lokpal Bill is open ended and confers unlimited powers. So it goes without saying that selecting the Lok Pal Members is the single most important task.  There are no checks and balances at all in the bill that would make it idiot member proof.   In other words, if the mainstream institutions have been compromised, there is NOTHING in the bill that would prevent the Lokpal from being compromised too.  It gets worse because of two reasons.

1. The mainstream institutions (CVC, CBI, CAG, etc) can be turned around by people power every 5 years. That it doesnt seem to happen is due to there not being enough free agent voters in the system.  We can hope for a 20-25% increase in free agent voters which will straighten these institutions in short time.
2. A compromised Lokpal will wreak havoc and lay to waste the other institutions. There is no chance of getting them voted out.

The timing is circumspect.

Sandhya Jain hits the nail right on the head: (emphasis mine throughout).

Anna Hazare’s so-called fast-unto-death is questionable for its anti-democratic disdain for elected government and people’s representatives. The timing is equally suspect – right after the adjournment of Parliament after passing the Union Budget. It may be recalled that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was forced to gift Rs. 40,000/- crores to the leaky MREGA project favoured by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her unelected friends in the National Advisory Council; his attempts to curtail this hole in the exchequer enraged her.

As if on cue, Hazare, NAC cronies, Rockefeller Foundation-funded Magsaysay Award winners, and other usual suspects, ganged up against the besieged prime minister…..If laws are to be adopted and enacted in this manner, do we need either government or Parliament?

My point is that he is instigating the middle class intelligentsia that comes to hear him at Jantar Mantar – and neither he nor any of his allies is a grassroots mass leader ……..he moots an unelected oligarchy. This does not bode well for the nation or the society.

Sandhya Jain goes on to write:
…..the idea that Magsaysay Award-winning Indians should figure in the Lokpal selection panel. This stinks of an American hand….. we shall never know what kind of private networking could take place in government and bureaucracy via its favoured persons, to further Rockefeller interests.

India’s high profile elites derive status from the international NGO cocktail circuit. Their insatiable quest for funds and glory makes them adopt ideas and concepts without examining their validity in an Indian context. As they are very conscious of their elite status, they have unacceptable contempt for the people and their elected representatives.

We cannot endorse these non-accountable and glittering Western satellites.

Compare and contrast with what Times of India’s Shalini Singh has to write about it.

Although she rallies against the CBI for filing improper chargesheet, she praises Hazare for his stand.

The CBI’s latest chargesheet in the 2G scam investigation…… Timid and short on detail,it serves more as a lesson for students of law and police academies on how not to make a chargesheet.

…..clean chit to the Prime Minister (4 pages), the attorney general (2 pages) and the Tatas (7 pages).

The 60-page final report does not have a single line to prove corruption nor does it even remotely mention the evidence….

Shalini writes further:

…. it is not keen on fulfilling its own mandate of a statutory investigating agency, the CBI has assumed the role of an auditor instead. This is an important move, which helps create a mid-point of Rs 30,984.55 crore between the CAG’s Rs 1.76 lakh crore revenue loss figure, which is accurately based on TRAI recommendations equating 2G spectrum with 3G spectrum, and telecom minister Kapil Sibal’s irreverent and indeed outright frivolous “zero loss” premise.

Anna Hazare’s agitation is timely, appropriate and critical. The CBI making a joke of the 2G scam investigation despite the Supreme Court’s best efforts shows how desperately India needs anti-corruption laws and institutions like the Lokpal to bring in the changes that Hazare and others in civil society seek.

I haven’t seen the chargesheet (and neither I am a legal expert in these matters) so it’s hard to express solidiarity with Shalini’s assertions. It is also pertinent to note that she has been writing about the 2G scam over the period of time, so it needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. I don’t want to write anything else about TOI because they have a history of suing independent bloggers and I don’t want a lame dick dingbat to send me a legal notice.

Jokes apart, the present course of events is muddy. No one can claim authority but everything is weighed and calculated to make matters worse for spirited and ordinary citizens. It is difficult to separate the chaff from the grain and interestingly, some of the mainstream publications in English Language Media have been critical of this balding asshole. However, its not really surprsing because the ELM (English Language Media); specifically the newspapers tend to toe the press releases issued by the Government of India.

With these limitations (of the blogging platform) and the din of thousands of idiots collectively crowing as representative of the civil society, it’s impossible to break through the logjam. Still, I seriously hope that sane people in this country get enough ejection velocity to get out of this nation for good because we have turned into a banana republic. It’s bad enough. Really.

Tags: 3G, API, author, Corruption, EDGE, Idiots, India, Indians, Media, Piracy, Prime Minister, scam, Spectrum, Tata, Tatas, Telecommunications India, Tihar Jail, Times of India, TRAI, Twitter

Harbinger Capital Partners’ Lightsquared network was originally intended to shake up the competitive landscape by offering new players wholesale access to an entirely new LTE network. Last July it was announced that Nokia won the $7 billion contract to build the LTE network, though a source with knowledge of Lightsquared’s plans tells Broadband Reports that things have changed significantly since then, and that not only is Nokia out of favor — but that Lightsquared and Sprint are working in conjunction on future LTE plans, with Sprint’s recently-announced base station retrofit now the cornerstone of Lightsquared’s nationwide LTE ambitions.

Thursday and Friday meetings were held at Lightsquared Headquarters in Reston, Virginia. A source tells Broadband Reports a number of things were discussed, including the potential for removing network build obligations from Nokia and instead giving them to Alcatel-Lucent, Ericcson and Samsung. A primary discussion point at those meetings was something called “Project Freedom,” which the source insists to us is the codename for Sprint’s liberation of their 4G fortunes from Clearwire.

According to supporting documentation, Lightsquared informed meeting attendees they were working with a 3GPP2 partner “who will allow for Lightsquared to deploy its network much quicker.” This partner, which the attendee again insists is Sprint, would work in conjunction with Lightsquared to jointly develop and deploy cell sites. The satellite portion of Lightsquared’s network would not be impacted by this movement, and a second phase of Lightsquared’s ambitions would involve “adding support for MetroPCS diversity,” says the source.

Our 4G strategy is WiMAX, full stop!” -Sprint CEO, Dan Hesse

Last May Sprint issued an LTE build RFP, and for the last year we’ve heard from more than one Sprint employee that Sprint was absolutely migrating to LTE, despite several denials by Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. Last December Sprint announced a multi-billion dollar network overhaul paving the way for a streamlined footprint and LTE.

According to the Sprint network roadmap, the project involves having Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson and Samsung retrofit every Sprint cell site, eliminating the refrigerator-sized cabinets for each technology (800 MHz, 1.9 GHz and 2.5 GHz) in favor of small, more energy efficient multi-mode base stations. The entire effort is expected to cost between four and five billion dollars, and will culminate in the phasing out of Sprint’s iDen network, something that will begin in 2013. More recently, Sprint has been claiming they could have a nationwide LTE network completed by the end of 2013, and LTE-ready smartphones on the market by the middle of 2012.

Instead of Nokia building Lightsquared’s network, Lightsquared plans to piggyback on the Sprint upgrades being performed by Alcatel-Lucent, Ericcson and Samsung — and share capacity on Sprint’s LTE network. That gives Sprint additional leverage in negotiations with Clearwire — or the option to detach entirely from an increasingly shaky relationship, which our source suggests is the direction Sprint’s heading. It’s possible that the Clearwire relationship could remain intact, but modified with Clearwire shifting to LTE as well. Regardless, this entire Sprint retrofit and partnership with Lightsquared (and their recent $586 million in fresh funding) appears to place Sprint squarely in the driver’s seat.
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Tags: 3G, API, Broadband, CEO, EDGE, Telecommunications India, Virgin

Last year retransmission disputes between broadcasters and cable operators grew to an entirely new level of annoying as the two sides fought over programming costs. Consumers stuck in the middle of such fights not only were bombarded with annoying efforts to get them on one side or the other, but they also missed significant programming events (including NFL football and the World Series), and briefly even had their access to Hulu disrupted.

Historically the FCC hasn’t intervened in these fights, suggesting they’re simply business disputes. But as consumers are finding themselves under the wheels of these disputes at an increasing frequency, the agency today launched a proceeding to re-evaulate current retransmission rules (pdf) that govern fee negotiations between broadcasters and pay-TV providers. They agency says they’re looking for comments in proposals that would:

• Provide more guidance to the negotiating parties on good-faith negotiation requirements
• Improve notice to consumers in advance of possible service disruptions caused by impasses in retransmission consent negotiations; and
• Eliminate the Commission s network non-duplication and syndicated exclusivity rules, which provide a means for parties to enforce certain exclusive contractual rights to network or syndicated programming through the Commission rather than through the courts.

Note that the proposals don’t involve the FCC actually stepping in and preventing carriers from pulling the programming plug on paying customers, or providing refunds to impacted customers — because companies would yell at the FCC for daring to involve themselves in private business transactions, despite the negative impact on users. Instead, like most things the FCC does, the rules will be more timid and focus on simply giving users a heads up ahead of the next service blackout. Consumer groups like Free Press and Public Knowledge were underwhelmed, arguing that the reforms won’t do much to actually help paying consumers.
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Tags: EDGE, FCC, GUI, Opera, Telecommunications India