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 As
I write this, a little-known us firm called Halliburton has just
been awarded a contract worth over $1 billion (Rs 4,800 crore) to
rebuild some part of destroyed Iraq.
A few curiosities, though. One, that Halliburton
is awarded the job even though it's teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
Two, that it gets chosen in a 'secret' process, where no other bidders
are even asked to present proposals. And three, curiouser and curiouser,
as Alice would say, Halliburton is still paying annual compensation
to its former chief executive officer Dick Cheney, the current Vice
President of the US. When everyone's talking about the 'conflict',
shouldn't we also talk of 'interest'?
All this from an administration that recently
made loud, sobbing noises about ethics and corporate governance.
A few more dots become visible, I connect them. I read of a Senator
from Southern California who tables a bill mandating that when Iraq's
mobile telecom services are re-built, they should not use the GSM
platform that Iraq and the rest of the Asian world have been using
till now, but pick instead a less-popular technology called CDMA.
There's not really much to choose between these
two technologies, except that an overwhelming majority of the world
uses the GSM standard. Orders for CDMA will result in royalties
accruing to Qualcomm, which just happens to be located in southern
California. Qualcomm, in a fit of reluctant honesty, concedes that
it has been paying lobbyists to promote its cause with cash-hungry
US politicians.
Is there something in CDMA that requires skull-duggery
to sell it? Back in India, its biggest backer, Reliance got permission
to provide local services, and then went ahead and announced mobile
roaming services that it never paid licence fees for, unlike the
other GSM operators in the country.
Such deviousness often backfires. Qualcomm
and Halliburton can learn from the UK experience. In the weeks before
Hong Kong was handed over to the Chinese authorities in 1997, the
British handed over the construction contracts for airport and bridges
to little-known UK construction companies, in preference to larger,
more experienced firms who bid lower. The Chinese protested-and
gritted their teeth. Sure enough, post-takeover, those firms found
themselves almost completely sidelined when it came to the bigger
business inside China. Does Qualcomm really think it's gaining brownie
points with its ham-handed efforts to buy its way into the spoils
of the Iraq war? Do you think the rest of the Arab world will welcome
Qualcomm with open arms?
It isn't just the technology-driven businesses
that are playing this game. Take the case of broadcasting major
NBC, which is owned by General Electric. They go and fire their
anchor Peter Arnett because he, to quote, "offers an opinion"
in an interview to Iraq television. I wasn't aware that US media
people were not supposed to have opinions. Even opinions as harmless
as thinking that the US is finding the Iraq operation more difficult
than it originally thought it would be. Something even a cerebral
amputee would agree with today-though, not, in this case, the scared
old men at NBC who begged and asked "How high?" when the
Pentagon said "Jump!"
The ease of buying off news organisations surprises
me. Virtually 100 per cent of the western world's journalists are
now, to use that word reminiscent of parasitism, 'embedded' into
US and UK armed forces, and hence report the US and UK point of
view. Which includes showing Iraqi prisoners of war and generally
furthering the propaganda that the good guys aren't suffering casualties,
while the bad guys are on the run.
So when non-Western journalists (gosh, you
mean they can report? Handle a camera? How did they learn that??)
show American prisoners of war, it's suddenly wrong and a breach
of the particular Geneva convention that the US didn't want to sign.
I'm waiting for the time when newspapers forget
journalism, ask you what events you want to have covered, and charge
you to write it up and print it.
Oh wait, hasn't The Times of India already
gotten to that?
Mahesh Murthy, an angel investor, heads
Passionfund. He earlier ran Channel V and, before that, helped launch
Yahoo! and Amazon at a Valley-based interactive marketing firm.
Reach him at Mahesh@passionfund.com.
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