Will Politicians and Business Tycoons stop taking credit for the work of techies?

On 2nd September 2016, Entire India woke up to see Indian Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi’s ( Politician ) endorsement for Mr. Mukesh Ambani’s ( Business Tycoon ) Reliance Jio on the front page of The Times of India. The advertisement said,

In the journey of time, there come a few life changing moments. Our honourable Prime Minister’s inspiring vision of a Digital India is one such movement. Jio is dedicated to realizing our Prime Minister’s Digital India vision for 1.2 billion Indians. Jio Digital Life will give the power of data to each Indian, to fulfill every dream and collectively take India to the global digital leadership…

The media has mostly been focusing on the ethical issue of whether a country’s Prime Minister should endorse any specific business tycoon and thereby draw a connect between the Prime Minister and his Digital India programme to Mr. Ambani’s plans for their new network, Jio. Well, Given the Oligarchy that exists in India in every Industry, if the purpose of Prime Minister is to make one oligarch compete with other oligarchs, in order to get rid of oligarchy from India, then all Indians would certainly support the Prime Minister’s decision to generate this competition and hence such endorsements are pardonable.

In that regard, Our Prime Minister can also start some competition to break up the monopoly of Reliance Industries in oil business as Petrol prices have seen spike in last few days in India even though the global oil prices are steadily plunging. However, We do not see any major competition in Oil Industry to Mr. Ambani. Free Markets or Competitive Capitalism is the best way to eliminate oligopolies in every industry to create more business opportunities in India and around the world. Perhaps, That approach would help Narendra Modi as a Prime Minister but would cause a severe damage to his political party (BJP) as they will not get any corporate money in upcoming elections if they try to break up the oligopolies in every Indian industry. Time will let us know whether Narendra Modi wants Free Markets ( free of oligopolies ) or Crony Capitalism ( by a few oligarchies ).

However, I am against the fact that both Mr. Ambani and Mr. Modi are taking credit for lower data rates that have been announced by Reliance Infocomm, Jio.  Mr. Ambani announced a ‘free welcome offer’ for Jio customers from September 5 to December 31. Reliance Jio will offer users data services free for four months, after which it will offer 10 tariff plans starting at Rs 19 a day for occasional users, Rs 149 a month for low data users and Rs 4,999 a month for heavy data users.

As an author of 3 volumes on the impact of technology on macro-economy, I guess I need to let readers know that neither Prime Minister Modi nor any business tycoon deserves any credit for lower data rates. As quoted and elaborated in depth in my first volume Mass Capitalism: A Blueprint for Economic Revival,

“Advances in the speed of data transfer because of the relentless progress of Moore’s law over the years should also have decreased the cost of data communication. Instead, the high prices are due to government-owned or government-sanctioned monopolies in the voice telephony structure.”

The data rates have to go lower with the progress of Moore’s Law over last half century, which has sharply raised technological productivity.The fact that data rates have not fallen drastically in the global economy is due to government sanctioned monopolies in telecommunication Industry. Hence, If Mr. Ambani is entering the telecommunication sector to break the existing oligopoly, it would benefit the Indian consumer. However, if the government aims to sanction a new monopoly for Reliance Jio then it is dangerous for Indian economy in the long run.

Besides, it is the techies who deserve the credit for helping boost productivity with the progress of Moore’s law that result in falling data rates. Neither does any politician nor does any business tycoon deserve any credit for the technological progress which would not have become possible if there had not been the HUMBLE engineer.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Apekshit Mulay (Apek) is a Business and Technology Consultant at Mulay’s Consultancy Services. He is also a senior analyst and macroeconomist in US Semiconductor Industry. He has authored three volumes in three consecutive years viz. Mass Capitalism: A Blueprint for Economic Revival (2014), Sustaining Moore’s Law: Uncertainty Leading to a Certainty of IoT Revolution (2015) and How the Information Revolution remade Business, and the Economy: A Roadmap for Progress of the Semiconductor Industry (2016). His technology based monograph is entitled ‘Improving Reliability of Tungsten Plug Via on an Integrated Circuit: Process Flow in BiCMOS and CMOS Technology with Failure Analysis, Design of Experiments, Statistical Analysis and Wafer Maps‘. He pursued undergraduate studies in Electronics Engineering (EE) at the University of Mumbai, India and has completed master’s degree in EE at Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX. Mulay authored a patent ‘Surface Imaging with Materials Identified by Colors’ during his employment in Advanced CMOS technology development team at Texas Instruments Inc. He chairs technical sessions at International Symposium for Testing and Failure Analysis (ISTFA). USCIS has approved his US permanent residency under the category of foreign nationals with extraordinary abilities in science and technologies even though he did not pursue a PhD degree in engineering or economics. He has been cited as an ‘Engineer-cum-Economist’ by superstar economist Professor Ravi Batra in his 2015 Volume ‘End Unemployment Now: How to Eliminate Poverty, Debt and Joblessness despite Congress’. He has appeared on National Radio shows, made Cover Story for Industry magazines, authored articles for newspapers as well as several reputed blogs & industry publications. He has also been invited on Television shows (because of his accurate macroeconomic forecasts) for his ideas about Mass Capitalism. He is also an entrepreneur in an e-commerce businesshttp://calcuttahandicraft.in/ which he started to envision his ideas about Mass Capitalism. His also has a very well visited personal blog www.ApekMulay.com

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