Holding state to ransom

The Uttar Pradesh government is justified in taking a tough stance against the striking employees of the state electricity board. Invoking...

The Uttar Pradesh government is justified in taking a tough stance against the striking employees of the state electricity board. Invoking the National Security Act NSA and mass arrest of employees may look harsh, but the employees have only themselves to blame for such action. What the government has sought to do is to bring a semblance of order into the functioning of the board and minimise its loss-making propensities. Considering that the UPSEB makes a loss of Rs 2,400 crore per year, it is a Herculean task to turn it around. Thus the government deserves to be wished Godspeed in its attempt.

Far from cooperating with it, the employees have gone on an unprincipled strike, crippling civic life in the state. Particularly hit are the farmers, who are dependent on power for their present harvesting operations. There are no labour issues involved in the strike. All that the government seeks to do is to split the board into three corporations to streamline their functioning and inject into it a measure ofcompetition. In its present form, the board has proved itself to be totally unmanageable. The only beneficiaries of its unmanageability are the employees themselves as underscored by the mounting establishment cost which is now in the region of Rs 550 crore per month. Added to it is the transmission loss which is as high as 42 per cent. To believe that all these problems can be sorted out by trifurcating the board is a bit too much but considering the hopelessness of the situation, any well-intentioned step is bound to be welcomed.

Splitting up the board is unlikely to send the employees packing. Nor is any cut in the wages in the offing. Surely the strikers know this. However, what is agitating them is the fear that under the proposed setup, they will be made accountable for the lapses of the board. The heavy loss in transmission is only because the engineers turn a blind eye to the rampant theft of power. Seen against this backdrop, the strike is essentially to protect vested interests. The sufferers ofthe board8217;s inefficiency are the people themselves. One reason why the state, barring Noida and Ghaziabad because of their proximity to the national capital, has not been attracting capital investment is on account of sloth in the electricity board.

Of course, UP is not an exception. In most states, electricity boards are perennial loss-makers which keep state governments perpetually in the red. All these boards would have been wound up long ago had not the governments been underwriting their losses. Yet, the governments are unable to tackle the boards because of the ability of the vested interests to masquerade as champions of labour causes. Nobody has been able to tell them that they are holding the states8217; progress to ransom and to deal with them accordingly.

Now that Uttar Pradesh, which has been paying a very high price for the inefficiency of its board for years, has summoned up the courage to deal with the problem, it needs support from the people, even if they have to put up with someinconveniences. The employees should realise that the sufferings the people undergo on account of their strike will only strengthen the case for the privatisation of the power sector.