Catagory: Business & Economics

Today, mobile connections are so readily accessible that it is perhaps easy to forget the time when only the elite had access to a phone provided by the sole operator: the Government of India. It all changed in the early 1990s as liberalisation stirred the Indian economy out of its decades of complacency.

The Telecom Wars begins its narration from those times, traversing the uncertain early years of the mobile phone industry. It is a vivid portrait of the fierce competition as Tata, Birla, Reliance, and Bharti bid to capture the lion’s share of India’s billion voices. As they did, India’s institutions to regulate and manage the sector also evolved—the ministry separated from the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT), and state-run operators MTNL and BSNL also joined the fray. Policy makers, entrepreneurs, and bureaucrats worked tirelessly to change India’s cellular topography.

Fast-paced and expertly written, veteran financial journalist Deepali Gupta’s account is both a comprehensive history and a work of great business insight.

This is the third volume in the series of books on India’s finance ministers, which capture the story of India’s economic policies through the lens of the Union government’s budget initiatives since 1947.

The first volume covered the period of thirty years from India’s Independence to the end of the Emergency in 1977. The second volume covered the twenty-one years from the formation of the first non-Congress government in India in 1977 to 1998, when the short tenure of the coalition government led by United Front ended. The present volume covers a period of sixteen years that saw just four finance ministers present Union budgets and steer their respective government’s economic policies through them.

A fascinating account of economic policymaking, the book analyses the role of India’s finance ministers in the management of the Indian economy during the era of coalition politics. It also highlights the significant difference these ministers made to the policy evolution of the government and, thus, left an indelible mark on the psyche of Indian citizens. It attempts to measure the impact of their decisions not only on India’s economic system but also on its political system, and to what extent their decisions were influenced by their socio-economic backgrounds. Foregrounded in rigorous research and full of interesting anecdotes, the book is the first in-depth account of the crucial role the finance minister plays in the functioning of India’s economy.