PUBLIC SECTOR BASHING - A counterpoint

It has become a fashion in India to bash the Public Sector. You start with any topic and suddenly you find reference to a non performing PSU. If you look at the history of PSUs the worst performing are/were the ones which were nationalized after the private sector milked them dry. a sick company was taken over and got more sick. I agree with the general maxim that the job of any government is to govern and not run businessBut this class distinction gets blurred when politics and big money interfere. Look at Wall Street - they trumped on free economy and no controls. when they burst due to greed and poor judgement they were the first to ask for aid and the great free market capitalistic country of the world jumped to save the ones who created all this mess at the cost of honest tax payers.

in India,the BSNL bashing has started.When will our experts ever read between the lines.

First they murdered Air India - (now Nira Radia tapes prove it). They have not allowed the airline to purchase a single new aircraft for over twenty years and expect the airline to make money. Whenever the airline went thro a procedure and recommended an aircraft the opposite lobby (BOEING VERSUS AIRBUS) scuttled the deal. They pointed out how the smaller airlines (private) are making money. INDIAN AIRLINES had to increase fares to accommodate the geniuses i private sector and run on unprofitable routes (like Chennai to Pondicherry with one passenger). The only time when the minister allowed Indian Airlines to wet lease aircraft the company outperformed all competitors miles ahead.

Now it is turn of BSNL. they have not been allowed to upgrade their equipments. Everytime a tender is floated the vultures (politicians, media and private sector) come in and screw the decision. Even with outmoded equipments BSNL mobile was a runaway success. Here too ,look at irony - BSNL and MTNL do not share towers which they share with run of mill new operators. When there was a craze for optical fibre lines the main players bribed the employees of BSNL to an extent of almost eliminating them.Then they found that laying the network was an expert affair and too costly for them. they withdrew with dug up roads allover .relaid with public money and taxes. BSNL is still the only functioning landline in country.

Look at power distribution in Delhi. We gave the distribution to TATA and RELIANCE and the only increase is in power tariff not service.

why India / Even in USA wherever they have tinkered with public utility services like power and water the private sector has miserably failed. At & T was a monopoly and had to keep services at high level with threat of breakup under MRTP

Optical fibre scam ??

Please go back in history when our didi was the first time railways minister.She made an interesting speech - she gave hints at how the rail ministry can cut down passenger fares substantially by alternate sources of revenue. Within a few fortnights she was conveniently shunted out of her portfolio. Mr.Pramod Mahajan was brought in through the backdoor as It minister and the first thing that he did was to scuttle the Rail Board initiative on a optical fibre network. As usual the media played dumb. Two large telecom giants came into lime light promising their own network.A few states obliged by giving them a free reign. both the companies -Reliance and Airtel - gave up.In between you found BSNL functioning deteriorate. Lines were cut and repairs did not take place. Somehow after a a year the giants realized that their idea was not that bright.BSNL came back with a bang with their low tech mobile and surprised everybody.

the missing link is what I term as the optical fibre scam. the Indian railways have perhaps the longest network in the world today.It covers most of the country. If we had the optical fibre run below the tracks ,it could have been done by trench less digging (ike Hong Kong tube).The lines would have been laid within a fraction of time and all that all service providers needed was the last mile connection from nearest railway station. cities like Mumbai would have become a broadband (i mean 54mb level) a decade earlier .The railways could have generated millions of dollars by leasing out and the moneys would have provided enough moneys for addition, upkeep and maintenance of rail stock leave alone reducing fares.

Corporate greed and manipulative politics played a big hand and our media was acting as usual. As the corporates were giants all political parties kept silent - maybe no one understood anything of the subject