Modi govt’s monetisation plan will end up destroying public assets built over several decades with hard work

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s announcement on monetization of public assets worth Rs 6 lakh crore starting from roads, railways to powerlines to private parties is aimed at defeating nationally-cherished independent economic development. The mad rush to privatize public sector enterprises is part of the neoliberal reforms pursued by the present regime. Built through decades, the planned self-sufficient economic projects, investing limited but much precious public capital with the help of indigenous scientific and technological achievements, is the result of long struggles waged by working people against the economic tyranny of past colonizers and current imperialism.

The monetization of public assets in the NMP list include: 26,700 km of roads, railway stations, train operations and tracks, 28,608 CKT km worth of power transmission lines, 6 GW of hydroelectric and solar power assets, 2.86 lakh of km fibre assets and 14,917 towers in the telecom sector, 8,154 km of natural gas pipelines and 3,930 km of petroleum product pipelines.

Prime Minister Modi’s idea of self-reliance should not be misread as embracing “Swadeshi” or taking a step towards anti-globalization. Instead, it is to be used to serve the interests of domestic crony capitalists and the global imperlaists. The key problem of Modi’s notion of ‘Atmanirbharata’ or self-reliance is that it neither has solutions to strengthen domestic public sector manufacturing nor the economic base, and also no possibility of promised creation of millions of jobs for the unemployed in the country.

During its two hundred years of colonial rule, Britain completely crushed the Indian industry and exhausted India’s resources. Jute, cotton and railways were the only established industries worth the name. India’s industrial sector was in very poor condition. It only contributed about 11.8 percent to the national GDP. The output and productivity were very low. We were also technologically backward.

It was understood that mere political freedom would not be of much use without achieving economic independence. The Nehruvian model of self-reliance was more or less followed during the course of seven five-year plans after independence. So the Mahalanobis model came into effect in the second five-year plan.

The focus here was on heavy industries, especially those that produced capital goods (equipment or goods used in the production of other goods). Major basic resources like steel, oil, energy, pharmaceutical, hydel power and irrigation projects, and also fertilizer plants, were built in the public sector seeking assistance from the erstwhile USSR. Several national research institutions like IITs were established around the country to evolve science and technology to modernize the heavy industry.

After independence, most private entrepreneurs had neither the vision nor the capability to undertake heavy investments in core sector industries. It was possible only after having long gestation periods. In line with ‘Bombay plan’ of 1945, eight major industrialists (of that time) sought huge government investments in establishing a heavy industry in public sector and also actively supported Nehruvian model of self reliance. The industrial policy was formulated to help Indian capitalists to create a potential national bourgeoisie robust enough in later times get into heavy and capital goods industry.

Decades after independence, we were able to establish self-reliant heavy industry in strategic sectors of economy in public sector. These initiatives put India ahead of most developing countries.

Beginning 21^st century, the public enterprises of the 20^th century had to face competition of market forces. Based on profit making capabilities (an average annual turnover of more than Rs. 25,000 crore and Rs. 5,000 crore of profit during the last 3 years) the government identified nine central public enterprises (BHEL, BPCL, GAIL,HPCL, IOC, MTNL,NTPC, ONGC, and SAIL) as ‘Navratnas’ and 45 ‘Miniratnas’, giving them autonomy, allowing them to enter into joint ventures and raise capital. This information was revealed by none other than Dr. Ashwani Mahajan, convenor of Swadeshi Jagran Morcha, an affiliate of RSS.

As per available data (The Study of Financial Performance of Indian Public Sector Undertakings, from Vijay Batth et al., 2018) the ratio for Maharatna Companies operating performance and productivity of assets was respectable and indicates their higher efficiency- with 4.5 for Coal India shows the highest value at 0.51, followed by ONGC, 0.23, GAIL, 0.13, BHEL, 0.12 and NTPC 0.11.

Despite high financial performance of PSUs, the present NDA government is actively pursuing its neoliberal reforms by privatizing even profit making PSUs as can be seen from the above data. It appears the present government is hell bent on privatising all public assets and hand over them to private corporate houses.

At a time when the country is still dealing with Covid pandemic, instead of addressing the problem, the ruling NDA government has chosen to disinvest public assets at breakneck speed. While uttering ‘Atmanirbharata’, in reality Narendra Modi is breaking the back of indigenous policy of self-reliance and actively serving the interests of Indian capitalists and global imperialism.

The current neoliberal ‘reform’ march does not stop with disinvestment of public sector units like coal, oil industries but extends to railways, health, education and other sectors of economy.

Modi’s politics, in fact, are meant to distract people from remembering their own dispossessed and alienated status which is a fall out of neo liberal ‘reforms’ and privatization. That is how imperialist loot continues under a so-called nationalistic BJP regime led by PM Modi, which will end up destroying India’s self-reliant economy.

(IPA Service)

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