The 'rise' of the public sector

It is now well established that successive efforts to monetise the government’s massive shareholdings in state-promoted companies since the exercise began in 1992 has been a case of hope triumphing over experience. Most years, there’s an appreciable gap between ambitious targets and achievement. But there is a surprise embedded in the data. 

Between the annual efforts at disinvestment and the expansion of the private presence in a host of sectors from aviation to the oil and gas, you would assume that the predilection for setting up public sector units (PSUs) had abated. On the contrary, the decades between 1990, when the