Thought for the day
"The best way to keep one's word is not to give it."
-
Napoleon Bonaparte (French, 1769-1821)
Word for the day
Genuflect (v)
To be servilely respectful or obedient; to grovel.
(Source:
Dictionary.com)
Teaser for the day
Given the behavior of our
parliamentarians, do we seriously need to reconsider the Constitution of India?
Selling sweets at village fair
The beginning of the disinvestment process by the new government
could at best be described as farce. It reminds me of an old bedtime story, my
grandfather used to narrate.
In a village, there lived a widow with
her two sons. Both the sons were lazy and hated studying or working. Once when
the annual fair of village was going on, the mother prepared some sweets and
told her sons to go and sell those sweets in the fair and earn some money. She
also gave one rupee each to both the boys for buying food for themselves. Both
the sons reluctantly went to the fair, found a shaded place under a big tree
and dozed off only to wake up at the lunch time. Feeling hungry, the younger
boy bought sweets from his elder brother and gave him one rupee the mother had
given him. In return, the elder brother bought sweets worth two rupee from the
younger one. In one hour, they had sold all their sweets, had satiated their
hunger and had also saved the two rupees their mother had given them. Happy and
satisfied, they returned home by late afternoon. Of course to the dismay of
their mother.
Since 1991, when the process of selling minority stake in public
sector enterprises (PSEs) first started, the government has attended many such
fairs and sold lot of such sweets. Who has actually benefitted from this
frequent ritual is matter of detailed study.
Unfortunately, what started as a strategic program to limit the
role of government in routine businesses like making steel, running airlines etc., has degenerated
to a fiscal management tool.
In spite of full recognition of the pertinence of limiting
government’s role in business to core and strategic areas and exiting all
non-strategic businesses successive governments have failed in achieving the
stated objectives and targets.
The February 2002 President address to joint session of the
Parliament categorically admitted that “Learning from our experience,
especially over the last decade, it is evident that disinvestment in public
sector enterprises is no longer a matter of choice, but an imperative. The
prolonged fiscal hemorrhage from the majority of these enterprises cannot be
sustained any longer.”
The primary reasons for the abject failure, in my view, are:
(a) lack of a
comprehensive policy framework on the issue of government role in business and
(b) lack of
commitment to the stated objectives of disinvestment.
Evidently, the disinvestment program has been mostly used as a
measure to manage fiscal balance rather than as a business or policy decision.
...more on this tomorrow
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