We suspect unstated reasons behind sales

THE newly married, thirty-something, soft-spoken Murli Dhar Rao has been associated with the Swadeshi movement as an organising secretary ri...

THE newly married, thirty-something, soft-spoken Murli Dhar Rao has been associated with the Swadeshi movement as an organising secretary right from its inception in 1991. In the past, he was an intellectual dissenter, who debated the reforms policy on the finer nuances of its differential effects. Today, after assuming his new responsibility as the convenor of the Swadeshi Jagran Manch, he has taken to the streets, busy organising rallies all across the country and attacking the reforms package as essentially ‘‘anti-people’’. He accuses those in favour of foreign investment as ‘‘the mouthpiece of foreign capital.’’ He thinks that the NDA government has done ‘‘gross injustice’’ in the name of disinvestment, busy ‘‘selling-off’ the national interest. In an exclusive interview with Ajit Kumar Jha of The Sunday Express, Rao attacks the NDA government reforms package. Excerpts:

You have never agreed with the NDA government’s reforms policy even in the past. Why have you suddenly begun to publicly accuse the government of being ‘‘anti-people’’?
It takes time to take a clear position of dissent from close quarters. In the past, we have had differences over one issue or the other. Now we are opposed to the NDA government’s whole package of reforms since we deeply feel that the government is not sincere in its commitment to the people. We are organising rallies all over the country to oppose the six anti-people polices: disinvestment of the public sector, preferential treatment to foreign investment, the signing of WTO, the lack of an employment focus on the labour front, the neglect of peasants in the countryside and the bias against small-scale industry.

How can you be opposed to disinvestment in principle knowing full well that public sector behemoths are nothing but inefficient conglomerates?
We are not opposed to the strategy of disinvestment per se. In fact, we are in agreement with it where one, the government sector is not performing well, and two, the private sector is developed sufficiently, for instance, in bicycle-manufacturing, or bread-making. Our philosophy is distinctly different from the Communists, who believe in state control over resources. Privatisation may be a good idea for the hotel and food industry, but it is a definitely a bad idea for infrastructure, such as railways. Witness the failure of the rail privatisation in Britain.

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Then why are you opposed to divestment of Modern Food, or for that matter of IPCL/BPCL?Will privatisation not lead to greater competition?
We opposed divestment in Modern Food and IPCL/BPCL because, in both cases, privatisation was aimed at one, creating a private monopoly, and two, there was serious undervaluation of the enterprise even in terms of prevailing market price. Consider the CAG report on the undervaluation of BALCO, it is estimated that the loss was Rs 102 crore.We are not opposed to competition but to selling off market share to private monopolies in the name of competition. It is unfair and unjust. We suspect that there are unstated reasons behind such sales, which are purely non-economic in character.

What do you mean by unstated reasons, are you referring to some ministers working on the behalf of vested interests?
That may be true, but what are the stated objectives for disinvestment? One, improving efficiency in production and management and efficient investment; two, enhancing competition to safeguard consumers, in other words, consumers should not pay for inefficiency; and three, productive use of scarce resources. Now tell me, how many loss-making PSUs have been sold? Why is the government only selling profit-making industries? The unstated reason could be to end budget deficit. Well, in that case, killing profit-making companies to get rid of the budget deficit is not sound economics. The nation has the right to get the correct value of its national assets.

What is wrong with attempting to end massive budget deficits?
Budget deficits lead to zero investment affecting growth and also increases inflation. The NDA government’s obsession with high growth without employment is also anti-people. Accelerating unemployment and increasing poverty levels will have a snowball effect that will end up destabilising our polity. High growth alongwith foreign investment only leads to the phenomenon of ‘jobless growth’. Instead of alluring foreign capital, why does the NDA government not enhance the capacity of Indians to invest?