With reference to your editorial, “Privatise, don’t disinvest” (November 11), it took eons for the Government to desist from running hotels and bakeries. In heavy industries, except for PSU steel plants surviving on China’s huge appetite, others have run to rust. The Government, having seeded industrial growth at Independence, must learn to withdraw in time for more efficient private enterprise to bear the onus. The Railways sold /leased its land for long to eke out an unsteady existence. Telecom PSUs have drifted into the wilderness and even sharing/leasing spectrum will earn them little respite. Have we not seen Air India sink deeper on a daily basis?
Disinvestment is for healthy firms that have an able and proven management and which need extra funds for expansion. Our loss-making PSUs cannot earn the merit of hiving off a minority part. Wisdom lies in disposing them when the going is good and realise value before takers become scarce. A sagacious and planned sell-off will safeguard the interests of the employees too.
The 79 sick PSUs identified for disposal are a hybrid basket of bad and worse performers considering their turnover, Ebitda, cash flow, debt-equity ratio, technological obsolescence, human resource costs and numbers, and accumulated losses, among others. So, it may be worthwhile to use both routes of privatisation and disinvestment by dividing the PSUs into these categories.
In order to ensure transparency and fair play in the disposal exercise, the Government may appoint a specially constituted committee comprising persons of impeccable credentials to work out the parameters of decision–making. Once these are approved by the Government, it can decide on the modality of disposal and buyers. So it’s better to lease these PSUs and see that the economy and the people benefit.
YG Chouksey
Pune
Good analysis
Stanly Johny has nicely collated the intrinsic weaknesses of the AAP in “The three mistakes of the AAP” (November 11). Its leaders have a penchant for making wild charges against political adversaries without solid proof, unmindful of the implications.
A new political party has to grow slowly. It cannot expect to make rapid strides simply because it won a pyrrhic victory in last year’s Assembly elections.. Many leading personalities have left the party due to the squabbles and lack of democratic functioning. Belittling political rivals will only boomerang on the party.
HP Murali
Bangalore
Help the farmers
This refers to the article “Green shoots in Rajasthan” by Rasheeda Bhagat (November 11). How much more evidence do our State governments need to move on building more check dams and save our farmers’ livelihoods? These governments should spend more money on water conservation and help farmers be more productive. Food inflation has been over 10 per cent for the past seven years.
With more agricultural produce and with proper incentives we can bring down inflation which is an indirect tax on the poor. More water, sensible use of electricity and a sensible policy on fertiliser use will help farmers produce more and quality food. The governments at the Centre and in the States should be more proactive in their agriculture policy.
CR Arun
Identity asserted
The article “Now that Bangalore is Bengaluru” by Narendar Pani (Novembr 10) threw light on the political angle apart from the evident cultural aspect. This change in name has been such a relief to a lot of Kannadigas. It certainly has given assertiveness to the locals over those speaking other languages. As new villages become part of outer Bengaluru, locals are frowned upon. Most Kannadigas in the city have learnt to converse in other languages. However, even after living in the city for more than 15 years, a lot of them do not learn Kannada. A lot of articles in your paper still refer to Bengaluru with the old name.
Meera
Make PSUs contribute
The time is right for the Government to offer loss-making PSUs on lease to professionals from both domestic and international markets and make them contribute to the economy in a big way. Taxpayers’ money cannot be allowed to be drained through these white elephants and the investments made in the PSUs have to show returns in terms of employment, production, revenues and growth in GDP. The Government has the backing of the masses and it is committed to good governance and bringing in efficiency in the management of the economy.
TV Gopalakrishnan
Bangalore
Totally unacceptable
When there are laws and the courts in a democratic set-up to act as a facilitator between various institutions of governance and the people to prevail justice, bestowing powers on the army under the Armed Forced Special Powers Act (AFSPA) to go wild on the slightest aberration is arbitrary and detrimental to the rule of law. When the military leadership is accountable to the political leadership, one wonders what prevents the executive to speak about the AFSPA. The legislature prescribing special powers to the army to follow its own rules and take the lives of ordinary citizens on mere suspicion erodes people’s confidence in the dictum that everybody is equal before the law. The army carrying out counter-insurgency operations in the name of safeguarding people means it’s literally armed with the licence to kill, not safeguard. This masquerading can’t be allowed go on.
R Prabhu Raj
Chennai
Pandian will be missed
MSS Pandian’s sudden death filled us with a sense of loss. He was an organic intellectual and an erudite scholar whose writings raised the level of our consciousness. His tomes of pioneering work on Dravidian and subaltern studies testify to his profundities. The traits of critical thinking and anti-authority run through his brilliant pieces of writing. He was imbued with a sense of social justice and espoused the Dalit cause passionately. He broke the intellectual hegemony of the upper castes and popularised Periyarism. A rebel against the Establishment, Pandian did not fit into the traditional mould of an academic. His seminal oeuvre includes such universally acclaimed must-reads as Brahmin and Non-Brahmin: Genealogies of the Tamil Political Present and The Image Trap: M.G. Ramachandran in Films and Politics . He has made discourse on caste, ethnicity, indigenous cultures, nationalism and other issues of public importance lively and rewarding. It is from men like MSS Pandian that we obtain our intellectual nourishment.
G David Milton
Maruthancode, Tamil Nadu