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Deccan Herald » Tavleen Singh » Detailed Story
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Family silver only for the babus
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When it comes to the basic needs of the people, there is never enough money, but when it comes to subsidising the public sector’s endless losses, thousands of rupees materialise out of nowhere
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In the Sonia-Manmohan Government nobody has been more vocal in support of the public sector than Mani Shankar Aiyar. He has gone on record more than once to describe our defunct, wasteful government enterprises as the ‘family silver’. And, in the Lok Sabha, a couple of years ago, he was passionate in attacking the last government’s disinvestment policy. ‘Before embarking on a policy that will deprive the nation of national control over Rs 65,000 crore of national equity, Rs 2.5 lakh crore of national investment and some Rs 10 lakh crore to Rs 15 lakh crore of national assets surely this Parliament has a right to a white paper which sets out the rationale for the wholesale auction of national wealth.’
So, as someone who believes with equal passion that the government has no business to be in business I found it hugely entertaining to see old Mani caught out while trying to pack the boards of PSUs (public sector undertakings) under his petroleum ministry with a bunch of Congress politicians. A news daily revealed last week that the Minister of Petroleum was trying to kick out independent directors of impeccable repute to replace them with petty party bosses, youth leaders and ex-MLAs. Now do you understand why Mani and his Marxist fellow travellers constantly come up with arguments to block the sale of companies that have been a burden on the country’s economy for decades?
What would happen to their powers of patronage? What would happen to mantriji’s corporate lifestyle? His highflying ways? Our so-called national wealth and national assets are, as anyone who covers government knows well, at the personal disposal of the politicians and bureaucrats who control public sector companies.
This is a shameful misuse of taxpayers money but Mani and his Marxist pals like to portray it as something they are doing for the ‘people’. If they were concerned about the ‘people’ they would have admitted long ago that the ‘Rs 2.5 lakh crore’ invested in the public sector would have been much better spent on drinking water, electricity, roads, schools and hospitals. When it comes to these things there is never enough money but when it comes to subsidising the public sector’s endless losses thousands of crore of rupees materialise out of nowhere.
Atal Behari Vajpayee was the only Prime Minister to make a serious effort to stop this criminal waste of public money but this government has reversed his policy largely because Marxist MPs, without whose support the government would fall, share Mani Shankar’s views except when it comes to West Bengal. Their own Marxist government has no qualms about disinvestment but it is banned for the Sonia-Manmohan government in Delhi.
This despite abundant evidence that politicians and bureaucrats make lousy businessmen especially in the services sector. The damage done by the public sector goes beyond the ‘national wealth’ we have squandered on it.
Thanks to men like Mani Shankar Aiyar running the show the public sector developed a shoddy work ethic that defined India until the rise of the private sector in the past 15 years showed the world that Indians could compete with the best when allowed to. The public sector cannot because its fundamental principle is that it is there to provide permanent employment to those lucky enough to have patrons in high places.
Despite the high-minded nonsense we hear in defense of the public sector, to the ideologically unblinkered it should be clear that the raison d’etre of the public sector is patronage of the kind the petroleum minister sought to dispense to his Congress party friends.
Travel on Indian Airlines and you will notice that the executive class cabin is almost always filled with politicians and bureaucrats. Go to an Ashoka Hotel and you will find the same preponderance of officials among the clientele. An examination of the unpaid bills in these hostelries could become a white paper on misuse of public money.
Then, there are the other perks. In a ministry like petroleum that controls some of our richest PSUs there are the helicopters and aeroplanes that come in handy at election time. There are company guest houses in the wilds where friends and family can be taken on holiday. There are the trips abroad for conferences on business and management and there are vast sums of ‘national wealth’ available to mantriji for the preservation of our ‘national assets’.
And, of course, as Mani Shankar Aiyar’s antics have revealed there are those immense powers of patronage. How do the ‘people’ benefit? The short answer is: they do not.
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Saturday, September 24, 2005
