India lost the momentum towards economic reforms after the UPA came into power

The approach to disinvestment over the last 5 years highlights the inability of our government to move forward on the path of progress.

We have all been agreeing to the fact that today, our government should concentrate on issues relating to health, education, infrastructure, social security for our citizens rather than managing day to day operations of hotels, car companies, telecom & technology companies etc. etc.

This is not because hotels or car companies are not important contributors to the economy of the country, but because, now our priorities as a nation have changed. India has seen a successful emergence of a competitive private sector environment and the government can now release control over companies operating in these sectors and concentrate its energies on other pressing issues in front of the country which include development of basic infrastructure, education, healthcare and social security of its citizens.

Soon after assuming office in 1998, the NDA government embarked on a full-scale strategic privatization programme, offering controlling stake in government-owned companies to "strategic partners". During its tenure, the government initiated the formation of a disinvestment ministry to concentrate on releasing its controlling stake from companies that should be handed over to the private sector in order to generate money that can be used on developmental initiatives for the country.

The entire effort of disinvestment also served a very important purpose; it made sure that public enterprises that were sold in this process became more efficient by bringing in private participation. This also ended an era of Ministers and Officials treating these government entities as “personal fiefdom”. There are numerous examples to prove this point.

The NDA government successfully earned close to around Rs. 34,000 Crores through the strategic disinvestment process from 1998-2004. Unfortunately after the UPA government took over, the priorities changed and the disinvestment ministry was abandoned for the sake of staying in power. There was no progress on the humongous initiatives of the NDA government and the momentum towards economic liberalization was completely lost. The government with so called army of “economists” failed to take a firm stand against the arm twisting of the Left parties and succumbed for the want of power.

Unfortunately between this political circus involving the Congress and the Left parties, India lost 5 precious years of development where so much more could have been achieved.

Source: Department of Disinvestment, Ministry of Finance, Government of India

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Total Words – 400 (Excluding the table)
Abhijit Somvanshi