> Was there no scam at all? Mihir Sharma’s book Restart (2014) has a good chapter on this. The answer it seems was, no. It’s not in the national interest to c

> Was there no scam at all? Mihir Sharma’s book Restart (2014) has a good chapter on this. The answer it seems was, no. It’s not in the national interest to charge maximal prices for natural resources, and this is followed by many countries even today — China and the US included — and such rights are given away for a nominal or modest price, and always with a view to ensuring wide market participation. Even European spectrum auctions have a clear aim of ensuring a sustainable market of 4 or more effective competitors. This has been historic practice in India also. For instance, the British colonial government gave India’s other big industrial group — the Tatas — rights to coal and iron mining in the late 1800s for free to set up India’s first steel plant. Even the BJP’s own Vajpayee government did this. The CAG’s “notional loss theory”, he argues, is rubbish. And looking at the events in India’s once vibrant Mobile Telecom industry, which has has now been reduced to an effective duopoly, one can argue Sharma was right.