Under the terms of the proposal, the state government will also be required to pick up 26 per cent equity inthe project. The six other states which have signed such agreements with WorldTel are Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka and West Bengal. In Gujarat, it has entered into a Rs 400 crore joint venture with the state government to set up a a modern information communication network. Pitroda, who was the first chairman of the Telecom Commission, criticised the policy under which huge licence fees where collected from private operators for telecom services. The people of India are still without any telecom infrastructure because of this.
Information is a great leveller.
It can put two unequal human beings on the same footing. C K Prahalad,co-author of Competing for the Future and Harvey C Fruehauf Professor of Business Administration, said India was undergoing a dramatic transformation from the inside. These signs of change didn't mean much by themselves but were very significant collectively, he said. In the stock market, for instance, knowledge based firms like Satyam, Infosys and Wipro commanded a market captilisation better than 10X of their revenue. Highlighting the importance of IPR in the managerial revolution, he said the Indian industry was under investing in innovation.