Pradip Baijal - Career

Career

Pradip Baijal had a distinguished career and a reputation of getting things done. He was instrumental in making power sector reforms a success; was the first disinvestment secretary and was the TRAI Chairman during the golden years for the sector. He is widely credited for ushering in much needed change in the sector and helping it grow at an unprecedented pace.

Baijal received several acknowledgements for his role as TRAI Chairman. To quote from a 2005 report titled “The Indian Telecom Industry” produced by Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta, “Indian telecommunications today benefits from among the most enlightened regulation in the region, and arguably in the world. The sector, sometimes considered the ‘poster-boy for economic reforms’ has been among the chief beneficiaries of the post-1991 liberalization… Despite several hiccups along the way, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the independent regulator, has earned a reputation for transparency and competence”

Baijal also pushed for unified licensing, under which an operator can offer telecom and broadcasting services on a single licence and next generation networks for Indian telecom sector that would bring down the network costs significantly. As a result of his work, the sector grew remarkably - from adding 0.2 million subscribers a year, the sector had added close to 20 million subscribers monthly by the time he retired. Shosteck, a research Group based in US wrote: “This study analyzes the Indian mobile market to understand the lessons that it might offer the rest of the world. It concludes that India’s “Unified License“ – with which any operator can offer any access technology, whether landline or wireless – has enabled for more robust competition than otherwise would be possible”. He is credited with suggesting a reduction in ADC, a fee that private operators pay BSNL for compensating its rural operations, and its eventual withdrawal by 2009.

Baijal has trained telecom regulators on behalf of the World Bank (Infodev) in Africa. He similarly works for ITU in Southeast Asia and has also undertaken restructuring of telecom regulation in Lao, Myanmar, and Oman, and has lectured ministers and regulators in Southeast Asia on reforms and regulation. He had also taken training classes on power regulation in 1999, in Vietnam. He is on the boards of Nestle, GVK, and Patni Computers, and advisory boards of the India Oil Corporation, Infrastructure Development Finance Company. For a few months in 2009, he was the chairman of an advisory committee to the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board in India. As Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), from 2003 to 2006 he changed cost plus regulation to competition regulation in India leading to an unparalleled growth in the sector.

His tenure as TRAI chairman coincided with policy recommendations that are alleged to have been controversial. Pradip Baijal was the TRAI Chairman when the technology neutral "Unified Access License" was implemented, a policy change which allowed fixed line operators who had paid lower license fees to offer mobile phone services, at first in the limited WLL mode (Wireless in Local Loop) and later, following an out of court settlement between mobile operators and the Bharatiya Janata Party govt, full mobility. The change in policy took place after several rounds of consultation with the industry participants but was regarded controversial because it allowed companies like Tata and Reliance who had paid much lower license fees for limited mobility to provide full mobility competing with players who had paid much higher fees for the same privilege.