You must have heard this word multiple times ‘Disinvestment’ or ‘Privatization’. To explain it in simple way, companies/entities which are owned 100% by government are sold. Government sells its stake in entities/companies to private operators or offers shares of such companies in equity market (or generally called as share market). In share market % of shares are reserved for high networth individuals, various fund houses and small portion is allocated for retail investors. These retail investors are many times even unaware of such developments. Many times governments even sell all stakes to some private operators or appoint them to run the show by signing extremely unfavorable contracts and these private operators end up sucking only money and making people’s lives more and more miserable. This is becoming worldwide phenomena and our country is no more isolated to this.
Consider this simple example – IPO (Initial Public Offering) of Coal India came just 4-5 years back. Government listed this company on stock market’s bourses and sold some of its holding. Govt had offloaded 10% of its equity. That means out of 100% which was owned by govt, 10% out of that got sold. This is the company which has largest coal reserves in the world. It has so much coal that if I am not wrong it would be sufficient for generation of electricity of our entire country. We will not need even any nuclear deal as we have sufficient amount of coal in our country itself. Mind it many of electricity generation plants in developed countries are coal based.
I subscribed and applied to this IPO and got few shares…but when I studied in detail then I realized that whatever shares govt had offloaded out of that 90% are owned by foreign banks, insurance companies and various fund houses. Major chunk of those shares were reserved for them. So bottom line is your country’s asset is now owned by these foreign banks/fund houses and wealthy individuals and they are getting rich dividends every year. Government could have offered 100% to retail investors and only to Indian citizens and could have created awareness among entire country for its subscription. They did not do this or they will never do this because their intention itself is not to help people of country but to help big private groups/ banks to grab your country as these people help them to win elections and allow them to keep their illegal money in their banks or offer them % shares through various different subsidiaries.
For sure you cannot beat money of rich groups, banks and insurance companies and they end up owning one by one all the good big organizations of your country. This way one by one almost everything is being put on sell. Common people who are struggling with their monthly budgets, jobs etc are not even aware of these things.
Question arises how they systematically bring it to the situation of selling. First they do is corruption or spend recklessly anywhere and then bring these institutions in losses. They deliberately manage it so badly that actually these organizations are set for failure. Then they tell us that now solution is privatization or disinvestment. Government does not have money and we have to sell it. They sell it and then begin the money sucking game and year by year people start losing whatever they have.
Below are some examples where privatization is going on and people are going through great suffering and you will realize the gist of saying “Disease is different and medicine given is different”
Electricity: - Go to Europe and you will understand pain of this. Electricity is in hands of all private operators and rates which are already astonishingly high suddenly go up exactly before winter. This is really pathetic. Same thing has begun in India and private operators are having fun with exorbitant light bills which are big burden on lower middle income groups and poor people.
Water: - Most of the water in Europe if provided by private companies and people pay for every mug they use. Same trend is coming in India. First they pollute water resources and then tell us to buy filtered water or have water filters. If water is impure then cleaning its resources is solution and buying from private people is not. “Disease is different and medicine given is different”
Gas: - Almost all gas companies are private in Europe. People pay big money and same has started in India. Piped gas of private operators etc
Trains: - I do not think any other country in the world has such complex train network like india, so many stations, so many people. By any means it cannot go in loss. If you look at the corruption and mismanagement done in it then one feels enraged and pathetic. Politicians are talking about privatizing it or privatizing stations or few routes or few coaches. So many vultures are sitting on the fence to grab this opportunity and I tell you this will be disaster. Europe has good trains with good speed but look at the money which is needed to travel. Again “Diseases is different and medicine given is different”.
Buses: - I think India is the country where gap between private and govt run buses is so blatant. Anybody can recognize it and if you do little fact finding then you will get to know that many of the private bus operators are big politicians or big corporate houses. Again make your govt’s organization sick and medicine for it is privatization and controlled by whom? People will end up paying more and more as each year passes.
Roads:- Isn’t it funny that roads are also privatized. You must pay toll if you pass by these roads which are constructed by private operators. I know of one toll which people are paying from the time when I used to go to school. Now my children are going to school but still that toll gets renewed under various circumstances. I call these tolls as legal extortion which keeps on increasing every few months!
Airports:- Well airports are also privatized and you pay for everything through air tickets. Only thing is we do not know and every airport levy different charges to airlines.
Mines: - As pointed earlier biggest asset of nay country are being sold and common people are not even aware of it or they are helpless.
This way so many things are privatized like Education, Banks, Post Offices, Govt run telecommunication, Govt run oil Companies etc..
Finally question runs in mind “What do government do with taxes collected from us?”. Aren’t they supposed to provide all the above things for free or with minimum charges from these taxes? Awaken yourself now and stop this in whatever way you can and save your country!
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