Just like airlines, another industry where the customer, an ordinary Indian, is extremely vulnerable to crony capitalism is the telecom sector. The world’s second largest telecom market with over a billion active mobile connections has only three real players, take a look at their market-share - Jio : 40 per cent, AirTel : 33 per cent and Vodafone: 20 per cent. Vodafone, once a premium brand, now survives on government dole as the sarkari shareholding is to the tune of 49 per cent , Airtel is a legacy player launched in 1995, Jio was the last to market in 2016. It's quite clear that Modi's blessings have enabled Jio to grow by leaps and bounds. It is not a coincidence that two entities linked to Reliance have donated Rs 400 crore via the now illegal electoral bond scheme to the BJP. Also, according the the government's own CAG report, BSNL, a PSU conveniently 'forgot' to bill Reliance a sum of Rs 1,757 crores over a decade for the latter's use of their passive infrastructure. This brazen and blatant loot is always to the detriment of the common man, but sadly vampire crony capitalism is here to stay.
