The decision to allow the Railways to manufacture their own locomotives, in the political constituencies of various ministers, is going back to the days of Indira Gandhi when the public sector was considered the better alternative. It was only later that we realised that the huge cost and time overruns in the public sector units hurt the economy. And from that realisation came the reforms of 1991. It is this policy lesson from the Congress government that the BJP followed up with great gusto and the country saw the greatest privatisation under the BJP/NDA regime.
The Congress/UPA was too scared of the Left parties to pursue this line of policy, and virtually put a halt to privatisation/disinvestment. Many expected things to change when the Left walked out, but no real change in policy resulted. The party has now done the ultimate U-turn in allowing manufacturing units to be set up in the public sector.
And now that the Railways have been allowed to set up their own manufacturing unit, why not allow other PSUs to set up new facilities as well? Why not, for the sake of saving millions of jobs in the textiles sector, renationalise mills all over again? This also makes a mockery of the entire tendering/PPP process in the country — companies interested in bidding spent several months of effort, only to find that the Railways arbitrarily scrapped the tender despite getting a bid.
Shrikant Sinha, New Delhi
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