The Department of Investment and Public Asset Management under the Ministry of Finance has released a new memorandum outlining a ‘New Public Sector Enterprise (PSE) Policy under the Atmanirbhar Bharat’.
The memorandum, dated February 4 plainly lays out the plan of the government to privatize or disinvest from key public assets and enterprises, and sell them at such a rate so as to be able to raise at least 1.75 Lakh Crore Rupees in the year 2021-22 itself. This was stated in the Budget 2021 too.
The memorandum divides all of the Public Sector Enterprises into two parts: Strategic Sector and Non-Strategic Sector. It says that all ‘those in the Non-Strategic Sector will be considered for privatization, wherever feasible, or otherwise they will be considered for closure’. The government however does not stop there, and also says that it wants ‘bare minimum presence’ in strategic sectors. It says that ‘the remaining will considered for privatization, merger, subsidarization or closure’. The sectors which are considered Strategic are Atomic Energy, Space & Defense, Transport & Telecommunication, Power, Petroleum & Coal, and Banking & Insurance.
This memorandum is part of a larger policy of the Narendra Modi Government, which seeks to bring ‘structural reforms’ in the economy by selling of public assets to a few corporates. The depth of the changes that they are seeking, to which this memorandum is a step ahead, needs to be understood.
5. Modi and Dismantling of Public Sector
“The Government is strictly following the dictum of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which says that the government has no business in business,” said Abhimanyu P, President of the BSNL Employees Union to Gauri Lankesh News while speaking about this development. “The ultimate goal of the government is to dismantle the entire public sector. This difference between Strategic and Non-Strategic is merely lip service which will not have any meaning ultimately.” Abhimanyu says that the core belief of Modi can be seen through his words, when he famously told as Gujarat CM in an interview to a private channel that the “Public Sector of the country had taken birth only to die”.
