The Hindu Business Line : RBI on PSE

While it is easy to talk of shifting the responsibility from the Ministries to the public sector enterprise (PSE) boards, it is not understood why attempts are being made to divest the administrative Ministries of their rightful functions.

This is akin to the earlier report of transferring all the PSEs under the jurisdiction of the Prime Minister's Office.

Setting up of special agencies to "create, develop and renew the governing board so as to ensure the qualities of leadership, enterprise, integrity and judgment among its members" sounds like eloquent prose but how far are we right in giving up the hope that the administrative ministries do not have the ability to do these? It is unfair to our civil servants.

After all, the people who will man the position in the new agencies will be ex-civil servants and experts — the same constituency from which the boards are constituted.Instead of acting as a hedge between the ownership and management, the proposed agencies would do well to act as bridges.

The findings of the draft report need to be debated further so that the objectives are clear and we do not create new hierarchies in pursuit of elusive benefits.

S. Subramanyan

e-mail

Letters to the editor and contributions can be sent by e-mail to: bleditor@thehindu.co.in