The monetization of public assets in the NMP list include: 26,700 km of roads, railway stations, train operations and tracks, 28,608 CKT km worth of power transmission lines, 6 GW of hydroelectric and solar power assets, 2.86 lakh of km fibre assets and 14,917 towers in the telecom sector, 8,154 km of natural gas pipelines and 3,930 km of petroleum product pipelines.

Prime minister’s idea of self reliance should not be misread as embracing “Swadeshi” or taking a step towards anti-globalization. Instead it is to be used to serve the interests of domestic crony capitalists and especially the global capital. The key problem of Modi’s notion of Atmanirbharata or self reliance neither has solutions to strengthen domestic public sector manufacturing nor the economic base, and also no possibility of promised creation of millions of jobs for the unemployed in the country.

After two hundred years o f colonial rule Brittan completely crushed the Indian industry and exhausted the resources at the dawn of the independence. Jute, cotton and railways were the only established industries worthy of name. India’s industrial sector was in very poor condition. It only contributed about 11.8 percent to the national GDP. The output and productivity were very low. We were also technologically backward. It was understood that mere political freedom would not be of much use without achieving economic independence. Nehruvian model of self-reliance was more or less followed during the course of seven five-year plans after independence. So the Mahalanobis model came into effect in the second five-year plan.

The focus here was on heavy industries, especially those that produce capital goods (equipment or goods used in the production of other goods). Major basic resources like steel, oil, energy, pharmaceutical, hydel power and irrigation projects, and also fertilizer plants, were built in public sector seeking assistance from erstwhile USSR. Several national research institutions, IITs have been established around the country to give support to evolve science and technology to modernize the heavy industry. After independence most private entrepreneurs had neither vision nor the capability to undertake heavy investments in core sector industries. It was possible only after having long gestation periods. In line with Bombay plan of 1945, where eight major industrialists (of that time) sought huge government investments in establishing a heavy industry in public sector and also actively supported Nehruvian model of self reliance. The industrial policy was formulated to help Indian capitalists to create a potential national bougeosie robust enough in later times get in to heavy and capital goods industry.

Decades after following independence, was established self reliant heavy industry in strategic sectors of economy in public sector. These initiatives had put India ahead of most developing countries. By 1970s and 80s, however we failed to modernize these industries technologically. With no clear agenda to conduct research to meet the technological needs of domestic heavy industry and address local health and other pressing societal issues, most of our famed national institutes and IITs ended up conducting research catering to research requirements of major western MNCs, while universities became centers for manufacturing thousands of highly qualified engineers and scientists whose final destination was immigration to USA.

Indian private sector standing on the clutches of public sector heavy industry bled it all through in sectors like steel and energy. By mid-80’s it grew in strength and became emboldened. It started collaborating with major MNCs for latest technology to manufacture goods by paying huge royalties. In mid-70’s Western MNCs started investing heavily on R&D in basic sciences and succeeded in developing state of the art modern technologies in manufacturing.

In early 90’s India joined the neoliberal band wagon as it was under heavy pressure from IMF and World Bank actively joining the forces of liberalisation, privatisation and globalization. Following the dictates of these global financial institutions the very concept of self-reliance was rubbished, in the belief that it was unprofitable to reinventing the wheel indigenously, when advanced technologies could simply be bought from anywhere at lower costs. By early 80’s major MNCs were possessing dominant modern technologies and started controlling of production of goods worldwide.

In 199, the path of disinvestments and privatization is chosen as part of neo liberal economic agenda that resulted in a paradigm shift and proceeding towards outright privatization of the public sector enterprises. The regime of commanding heights for the public sector gave way to the environment of market economy. Beginning twenty first century with dwindling state protection and budget support the public enterprises in the twentieth century now had to face competition and domination of market forces. Based on profit making capabilities (an average annual turnover of more than Rs. 25,000 crore and Rs. 5,000 crore of profit during the last 3 years) Government identified nine central public enterprises (BHEL, BPCL, GAIL,HPCL, IOC, MTNL,NTPC, ONGC, and SAIL) as ‘Navratnas’ and 45 ‘Miniratnas’, giving them autonomy, allowing them to enter in to joint ventures and raise capital from the international went out from the country to MNC mother companies during the same period was around 287 billion dollar (about Rs 19 lakh crore). This information was revealed by none other than Dr. Ashwani Mahajan, convenor of Swadeshi Jagran Morcha, an affiliate of RSS.

As per the available data (The Study of Financial Performance of Indian Public Sector Undertakings, from Vijay Batth et al., 2018) the ratio for Maharatna Companies operating performance and productivity of assets was respectable and indicates their higher efficiency- with 4.5 for Coal India shows the highest value at 0.51, followed by ONGC, 0.23, GAIL, 0.13, BHEL, 0.12 and NTPC 0.11.

Despite high financial performance of PSUs present NDA government is actively pursuing its neoliberal reforms by privatizing even profit making PSUs as can be seen from the above data. It appears the present government (as the previous regimes) is hell bent on privatising all public assets and hand over them to private corporate houses.

At a time when the country is seriously struck with Covid pandemic, instead of addressing the problem, ruling NDA government chose to best use of this epidemic to disinvest all public assets at breakneck speed. While uttering Atmanirbharata in reality Narendra Modi is breaking the back of indigenous policy of Self-reliance and actively serving the interests of Indian capitalists and global imperialism. Current Neoliberal reform march does not stop with disinvestment of Public sector units like Railways, Coal, Oil industries but extends to Railways, health, education and other sectors of economy.

Modi’s politics, in fact are meant to deviate people from remembering their own dispossessed and alienated status as a fall out of rumbling march of neo liberal reforms and privatization. Added to it are the new issues created time to time like the communal flare-ups in the wake of citizenship controversies and Ram mandir construction. That is how imperialist loot continues under a socalled nationalistic BJP regime led by PM Modi by destroying nation’s self reliant economy. (IPA Service)