Imagine this you have around 10-15 years of experience in your career or field of expertise, in the course of which you have successfully executed and managed many projects. You have all the qualifications and a good track record to head your division or go into a senior position as per your organization’s procedures. Now you are rejected just to accommodate Mr X who gets the position only by the virtue of his being connected to the big boss.
Now imagine the above scenario being repeated all over in your company, where all the deserving persons are looked over in favor of the Big Boss’s relatives or cronies, whose only qualification is that they happen to be connected to Big Boss. Now whatever be the sector –IT, Auto, FMCG, Steel that company is on the fast track to failure. Right.
Well quite wrong according to Honorable Petroleum Minister, Mr Mani Shanker Aiyar . Friends welcome to this blatant example of how cronyism and the tendency to treat the PSU’s as a recruitment ground for the Minister’s lackeys, is threatening to run them to the ground. Every time there is a proposal to privatize a PSU, there are howls of protest from the Left to the bleeding heart liberal media to the well entrenched trade unions about how wrong it is to sell off the national assets. Obviously, for these national assets are meant to be packed with the cronies of the politicians and bureaucrats right.
What I am giving here is what I got from a news article in the Indian Express and should give you all a clear picture of what is wrong with our Public Sector Units. Now please note this:
As per the Government’s guidelines, an independent director on the board of a navratna or a miniratna should be drawn from senior bureaucrats—having served not less than 10 years as Joint Secretary—or university professors, institute heads, managing directors from the corporate sector. This is essential, the guidelines say, to ensure that the PSUs are ‘‘globally competitive and have a level playing field with the corporates.’’
Now what does our Hon Minister do, he trashes the list of independent directors proposed by Directory of Public Enterprises and instead packs it with a set of men whose qualification is same-Member of the Congress party.
And what do these appointees get? Access to business deals and investment plans of the company, Rs 10, 000 for each sitting, air travel in executive class and stay in a 5 star hotel. Now lets see the relative merits of the contenders.
ONGC
The rejected persons were V.P.Singh, Ex-CMD, IFCI, Bakul Dholakia, Prof, IIMA.
And who gets selected in their place?
A former Minister of the Assam Govt who was dropped during a cabinet reshuffle( Dev Konwar), a secretary of AICC( Manish Tiwari), ex Home Minister of Gujarat( Naresh Rawal).
Now moving on to HPCL
P V Rajaraman, ex chairman of TNIDC and Prakash Apte, Director, IIMB get rejected. And who are the experts who fill their position.
Nirmala Sawant, who was an ex Mumbai Mayor, Mrithyunjay Naik, former secretary of CPP.
Alka Lamba whose only claim to fame is that of being an ex DUSU president and Sec, Mahila Cong, gets to be the director of Balmer Lawrie.
The list goes on and on. For more details one can refer to the link.
https://indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=78160.
But this should give an example of what exactly is wrong with our governance. Instead of making PSU’s more accountable and more competitive, our Politicians treat it as their personal jagir meant to hand out jobs to their lackeys and cronies. Is it any wonder none of them are willing to let go of their precious “Navratnas”? Where would they find the jobs to satisfy their boys?
The PSU’s were established to provide infrastructure development in areas which the private sector could not fulfill. Given proper autonomy and a free hand in selecting the best talent available, many of them could have played a major role in the economic development of India. Instead thanks to the tendencies of the respective ministers to staff them with lackeys, they are being driven under systematically.
Its not my case that the private sector is free of this crony culture. But its not as blatant. I mean if a company removed all it’s qualified directors and staffed them with people whose only qualification was being close to the top honcho, that company would never survive in the long run. We can see the way many family run business which choose to operate in the same manner, sinking like the Titanic after the license permit raj was dismantled.
And it’s the same case with every department in India. Railways, Steel, Transport in none of these ministries are the Ministers in charge willing to let go. The reason is what you see above.