The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s ministers in Delhi aim to make their mark by hook or by crook. The current candidate for the championship is Anbumani Ramadoss, the health minister, whose juvenile attempts to get control of the All India Institute of Medical Sciences got him homework from Delhi high court; it asked him to sign a thousand degree certificates in 24 hours. But he had an unbeatable predecessor in Dayanidhi Maran who, as minister of telecommunications, carried on a virulent battle with Pradeep Baijal, the chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India; it ended only with Mr Baijal’s retirement. Then Mr Maran replaced Mr Baijal with his own right-hand man, Nripendra Misra, the telecommunications secretary who had stood by him in his feud with Baijal.

In view of this history, it might have been expected that the chairman of TRAI would kowtow to department of telecommunications. But worms are known to turn sometimes. TRAI is reported to be in conflict with DoT over spectrum allocation. This is now done by the Wireless Planning Committee, an interministerial committee on which every interest is represented. With so many members, it is difficult to get dates acceptable to all; so the WPC does not meet even once in a quarter. When it does, every member defends his department’s turf as if he was the last man left. The result is that spectrum is not being released, cellphone operators are fast running out of it, service is deteriorating, and the cellphone industry, one of the country’s most spectacular growth heroes, looks likely to grind to a halt. The simple solution to the problem would be to abolish DoT, which lost its usefulness when TRAI was created; since then it has kept itself busy encroaching on TRAI’s turf. But such revolutionary destruction cannot come from our gentle prime minister; he takes it as his job to keep things running, however badly they may. The next best solution would be to abolish the WPC and transfer spectrum management to TRAI. But that would upset the defence ministry, which considers it its patriotic duty to squat on the swathes of spectrum it uselessly occupies.

This is a typical problem of conflict between ministries which would neither see reason nor back down. The former prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, had solved the problem by appointing groups of ministers; he had made ministers responsible for solving the turf problems created by their ministries. Manmohan Singh has more GoMs going, but they are not making decisions. Too many are chaired by his right-hand man, Pranab Mukherjee, who does not have time; other ministers do not have his persuasive powers. The only option left to Mr Singh is to use his principal secretary and get work done in secretaries’ committees. It may work, but only if he backs it up.