Soon after the attainment of independence in 1947, policy planners floated the concept of mixed economy. For garnering public support to the concept, it received extensive media publicity. Even the Government boasted of its great success promising to lift India out of the morass of backwardness and poverty. It meant that along with private enterprises in various sectors of economy, public enterprise would also receive impetus. Of course, some of the Public Sector Enterprises did make good progress but that was not true with many others. Most of them did not fare well for different reasons. These became ailing units. Their condition began deteriorating day after day and the Government had the compulsion of taking a decision about what was to be done to these. Even the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) in its numerous reports had suggested either infusing of new lease of life in these ailing PSEs or winding them up because of being burden on the State’s exchequer. These became non-productive; the staff had to be paid salaries, besides meeting other expenditures.
It was in the background of this situation that the Finance Minister, while presenting the budget for the financial year 2015-16, had announced on the floor of the house that 19 ailing Public Sector Enterprises would be comprehensively transformed by drawing them out of the ambit of different administrative departments. He had proposed to bring them under one managerial and administrative basket for holistic corporatizing and financial restructuring. The decision was hailed as concrete step of bringing about sea change in the status of the ailing PSEs. In the year 2013, the Government constituted the Bureau of Public Enterprises to review, coordinate and evaluate functioning of these units, and even a Task Force had gone into their categorization. It even recommended certain measures for their revival. Naturally, after announcing this policy decision, transformation of Public Sector Enterprises was seen as a right decision keeping in view the fact that time had come to make them relevant to the contemporary market context.
Government’s inability of implementing the decision about PSEs has made people very skeptical about its ability to make fresh budgetary promises and fulfill them. Eight months have gone by and even a formal order mentioning the intent of transforming the ailing units is not issued so far.
We are aware that bringing about the drastic change in the status of the PSEs is not a simple thing to do. There are many complicacies. It is a lengthy and time-consuming process. Therefore, to expect fullest implementation of the transformation scheme within a short period, is simply asking for the moon. However, the real point is what are the initiatives taken by the Government subsequent to the announcement in the Legislative Assembly and how far have those steps yielded results. It is simple logic that the Government should have taken very seriously its major announcements made during previous Budget session.
It was also announced at that time that the Government would also carve out some administrative departments and put them into the non-departmental fold. Moreover, it was also hinted that this change would be made from the State Motor Garages (SMG), which shall move from being an administrative department to being a non-departmental undertaking. Even this has not happened.
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