Newsclick discusses the 2G Scam and the JPC Report, rather Chacko's Report with Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, eminent journalist and Prabir Purkayastha from Delhi Science Forum. One wonders how the Report gave a clean chit to the Prime Minister by saying that he was mis-led, when it is very clear from what is available in the public domain that Mr. Raja had, at every step, told the PM what he was going to do. A scarce and finite resource like spectrum, which belongs to the people of this country has been bartered away favouring a priviledged few and causing immense loss to the people at large, by subverting the rules and regulations. The UPA Government has failed to perform its duty as a fair and transparent custodian of these resources which are the property of the nation.

The recent auction of the 2G spectrum has drawn bids of only Rs. 9,407 crore. Various spokespersons of the Congress and Union ministers have been propagating that this somehow justifies Raja’s illegal first-come-first-served policy of giving away spectrum.

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, journalist and a well known commentator on telecom, discusses with Newsclick how this auction was programmed to fail. Inspite of it's failure, it has got the same amount of revenue with less than 20% of the spectrum being sold that is what Raja had given away in 2008 in his first-cum-first served policy.

The National Telecom Policy 2012 (NTP 2012) has now become the official policy after one year of discussions. Of course, the context of the policy – the aftermath of the 2G scam – has now changed with 122 licenses being cancelled by the Supreme Court. So some of the earlier drivers of the new policy, bailing out the new entrants who had secured licenses fraudulently are no longer there, but the broad thrust of the policy – help the private sector at the cost of the public sector telecom companies remain. Also a new scam is in the making.

Senior Journalist Paranjoy Guha Thakurta discusses developments in the investigations into the 2G Scam with Newsclick again. Thakurta had explained the matter lucidly in earlier interviews as well. In the current interview, he lays out the importance of the Supreme Court's directives into the investigation of the scam, brings out the roles of various corporate actors and politicians in the scam and speculates as to what kind of retribution would be mandated for the wrongdoers.

The 2G scam has shown how scarce national resources like the spectrum have been given at throw away prices to big capital. In this game, there are not only older players such as Reliance, Unitech and Tatas, but also newer players closely linked to certain political parties and figures. DB Realty and the close proximity of Shahid Balwa with Kanimozhi and Sharad Pawar has been doing the rounds for quite some time and is now becoming public.