All The Things Sonia Gandhi Got Wrong Or Forgot In Her Intervention In Lok Sabha Yesterday 

Yesterday, during the Question Hour debate in the Lok Sabha, United Progressive Alliance Chairperson (UPA) Sonia Gandhi said that six manufacturing units of the Railways in her constituency Raebareli, Uttar Pradesh, will be corporatised by the Union government and alleged that this was the beginning of privatisation where country’s assets will be given to a few selected people at nominal rates and thousands of people would lose their jobs.

In reality, what the government is doing is corporatisation of these production units to bring them under one umbrella for better management and sustainable growth.

There’s a big difference in privatisation as done by the erstiwhile UPA where they gave away complete rights to private companies and corporatisation which the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government is doing where the ownership will remain with the government itself. Raebareli's Modern Coach Factory made zero coaches in the UPA era but in the NDA term it was revived and in last one year it has manufactured around 1400 coaches. NDA’s corporatisation proposal of the same is aimed at increasing investment, jobs and efficiency while keeping the ownership with the government.

It's also amusing to see the former Congress president complain about privatisation, and even corporatisation. Let’s see some of the examples of both from the UPA tenure:

1. Coalgate – This was almost like a Direct Benefit Transfer to the corporates by Congress government. It was a clear example of privatisation. In 2012, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) tabled the coal scam report in the Parliament and pegged the loss to state exchequer at Rs. 1.86 lakh crores which resulted in the Supreme Court’s historic decision to cancel 214 out of 218 coal blocks allotted since 1993.

2. The 2G scam had the same story as of Coalgate. The CAG pegged the losses at Rs 1.76 lakh crore and the Supreme Court in 2012 declared the allotment of the spectrum “unconstitutional and arbitrary”.

3. The GSTN was incorporated as a private limited company in 2013, at the time of UPA government. A lot of netizens criticised this decision of allowing private companies to hold a majority stake in GSTN. This was rolled back and in September 2018, the NDA changed it to a government entity.

4. The UPA was involved in the privatisation of Delhi and Mumbai Airports as well. In January 2006, the then Minister for Civil Aviation Praful Patel announced that an empowered Group of Ministers had agreed to sell the management-rights of Delhi Airport to the DIAL consortium and of the Mumbai airport to the GVK Group. In May 2006, the management of Delhi and Mumbai airports were handed over to the private consortia.

P Chidambaram, the then Finance Minister said in the Budget speech of 2005-06: “The Securities Contracts (Regulation) Act, 1956, as amended recently, requires all stock exchanges to be corporatized and de-mutualized. Three stock exchanges are not yet corporatized. In order to facilitate their corporatization, I propose to grant a one-time exemption to them from stamp duty on the notional transfer of assets.”

Sonia Gandhi in her parliament speech further said that Jawaharlal Nehru had termed PSUs as 'temples of modern India'. If that is what she genuinely believes then either her party and the UPA were involved in wrongdoings in their time or she only opposed the government for the sake of opposing.

The NDA government’s effort to initiate reforms in the sector needs to be appreciated and supported, and cannot be stalled in face of disingenuous criticism.