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Monday,
July 7, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Arun
Shourie admits pressures to disqualify Reliance in IPCL race
Just do it |
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News analysis Apple
import worries HP farmers Panel to
address industry’s problems
Correction
not ruled out
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Arun Shourie admits pressures to disqualify Reliance in IPCL race
Mumbai, July 6 “The pressures brought not just this transaction but almost the whole disinvestment programme to a halt”, Shourie said at a function where President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam delivered the first Dhirubhai Ambani Memorial Lecture here. Reliance, which ultimately won the bid for IPCL, had quoted a price of Rs 231 per share as against the then prevailing IPCL price of Rs 100-120 per share, he said adding, this bid was almost twice that of the nearest rival, IOC, and the country was the immediate gainer. The Minister stated that the government had then decided to go by the settled guidelines to qualify and disqualify bidders. “If Reliance fell foul of those guidelines, then it must be disqualified, no matter what, if it did not, it must be allowed to bid, no matter what”. Shourie said “throughout the period, Dhirubhai never contacted me as he was getting to know what was going on — for he had sources in places where mere journalists like me do not even know there are places”. Following the results, Dhirubhai rang up and in choked voice said “I know what you have been put through — anyone else would have given up... I will never forget... I do not care about business. I care about relationship. No one in my family will never forget”, the minister recalled. Shourie said his acquaintance with Dhirubhai went through an almost 180 degree turn over the years. “I first learnt about him through the articles of my colleague S. Gurumurthy. The point in most the articles was that Reliance had done something in excess of what had been licensed, it was producing in excess of that capacity”. Most would say today that those restrictions and conditions should not have been there in the first place, that they are what held the country back, he said. Dhirubhai should be thanked for exceeding the limits in which those restrictions sought to impound them as it helped to create a case for scrapping those regulations, he added. Referring to his relationship taking a turn, he said “we had all got convinced that persons like him had done the country a service. He was always direct and full of ideas about what the country should do, if only it would be allowed to do it”. Recalling Dhirubhai’s meeting with media baron Rupert Murdoch, the minister said Ambani gave a “guru mantra” to the latter that “apart from meeting the good people you must also meet the wrong people... you see, they (bad people) can stop what you want to get done”. Shourie said “and I can testify from personal knowledge, that one must follow it! I face the cost of not following it every day as I try to implement government’s decisions on disinvestment!”
— PTI
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Just do it
When experts at the Punjab Government’s July 2 talk show on reforms were giving Capt Amarinder Singh tips on how to manage the economy and improve the level of health and education in the state, the same day the Amritsar District Education Officer declared 70 schools in the border district as “sick” and withdrew science and commerce subjects from the schools showing poor results. Instead of pulling up teachers for absenteeism and the headmasters for poor management, he decided to wind up the science and commerce classes, denying the rural students whatever limited opportunities they had to study the two important subjects. By that logic, will the poor arts results lead to the closure of all border-belt schools? That reflects the way this government functions. Politicians, officials and academics will go on debating how important education is for socio-economic development, yet action on the ground is either missing or can be as idiotic as seen in Amritsar district. The state’s education budget is not what it used to be. Universities and private colleges are fund-starved and the burden on students has been increasing year after year. The health sector is not better managed. There is no need to send bureaucrats abroad to study what needs to be done, or to invite globally floating and fattening experts, who have hardly done any worthwhile study on the state’s non-growth, to roundtable conferences for discussions on reforms, or to form advisory clubs thereafter. Motivated praise by economic gurus might sound nice and reassuring for a demoralised administration, but that is tantamount to self-delusion. The experts pay for the official hospitality by telling the hosts that they “see” a “turnaround” in Punjab’s economy. Where is it except in official files or demos? They still like to call the state progressive, though its growth rate is below the national average. One such expert came out with the brilliant idea of making a comparative study of development in Bangladesh and Punjab. No one would ask the Chief Minister why he had to stop free college education to girls. He could have saved a lot more money by keeping only one DGP and sending out the rest to where they are needed. Or by slashing the abnormally high number of IAS posts. Or by rolling back the police districts and drastically scaling down VIP security. No one would ask the CM why he had to provide a Qualis for each MLA, why he had to appoint chairmen of boards and corporations whose junior employees are being forced to accept the VRS for being financially unviable. No one would ask the scion of the former royal family why he spent Rs 1.44 lakh daily on his helicopter rides. No expert would ask why Punjab had got left behind in IT and in e-governance. When will the promised IT park in Mohali finally come up. When will power reforms actually start? Why the condition of link roads is so bad? Why are private bus owners making profits and while Punjab Roadways and the PRTC are
suffering losses? Why are NRIs not investing in Punjab? When Capt Amarinder Singh took over as the Chief Minister, he said the Akalis did not look beyond agriculture. One thought he would. But even agriculture has remained neglected. Once again, the Johl report has remained unimplemented and no one seems to know what to do next after the Centre’s no to it. Let’s have another one from Mr Johl on this. Elsewhere, GM crops are being tried. In Punjab spurious seed is being passed around as Bt cotton. Yet PAU and the Agriculture Department have not awakened. Punjab’s forest cover and underground watertable are declining. Rainwater harvest is common in Delhi, but in Punjab this is perhaps an
unfamiliar word. These are all issues which can be understood and tackled by plain common sense without help from the experts. The road map to reforms, which began as early as 1991 at the central level and soon thereafter in some states, is very clear. By now even the dumbest among bureaucrats should be familiar with what initiatives progressive states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu are taking for fast track growth.
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News analysis Several academic exercises have been done to diagnose what ails Punjab’s financial, socio-economic and administrative sectors. But answers are still not coming as to how and where to begin. The July 2 roundtable conference on reforms was another such exercise. The discussions had revolved around how to pull Punjab upfront and improve its finances, build infrastructure, resuscitate agriculture, restructure the power sector and reinvent the social sector, particularly education and health. The experts said all this could be done only with good governance, efficient services delivery to the people and their empowerment, as per the 73rd and 74th Constitution amendments. It would thus involve the total democratic decentralisation in a time-bound manner and making panchayati raj institutions and local government responsible and responsive to run these departments. However, very little has, so far, been done in Punjab on decentralisation of the identified 29 departments. Also, politicians and bureaucrats were unwilling to forgo their rights and powers to allow implementation of reforms. The third factor, “vested interests’’ , has also to be resolved, as together, these three resist change because of mind-set. The message of the experts was clear: the government must first reform itself. While the experts appreciated the bluntness of the bureaucracy in exposing the weaknesses and strengths of Punjab in the presentations made at the conference and the ground already covered, the experts remained apprehensive if despite the people’s mandate and majority that the Congress had, its leadership would display political will to implement of these reforms. The presentations also outlined the state’s own “unfinished’’ reforms, including right-sizing the government, improving quality of public expenditure, reforms in the tax and transport sectors, creation of business-enabling environment by reforming regulatory regime and opening fiscal space for reforms. Thus, the experts, who were aware of the system constraints, suggested target-oriented, time-bound implementation, which would eventually impact the economy over a period of time. Their stress was on the power sector reforms and public-private sector partnership and doing away with archaic laws, rules, regulations, which impede fast-track implementation of reforms. In response, Capt. Amarinder Singh announced setting up of a monitoring mechanism in the form of an “Industrial Advisory Council’’ to implement the reforms in a time-frame. But the experts were skeptical of Capt. Amarinder Singh’s political colleagues. Would they also risk their votes by being truthful to their constituents on how these reforms with a long gestation period would benefit them? Their skepticism was because of the political risks involved, which may inhibit implementation of reforms. Even Capt. Amarinder Singh’s appeal to the Opposition to adopt these reforms, as “political agenda’’ in future elections may not get the desired response. Yet, the experts felt, irrespective of a party in power, the continuation of these reforms was imperative for Punjab. The slow progress on these reforms is as much a reflection on the poor governance as setback to the state’s body politic and economy due to decade-long terrorism, which restricted the growth during 1985-2000 to mere 4.5 per cent, as compared to national economy’s over 6 per cent. Slow down of green revolution effects had also contributed to a slower growth rate. The structural imbalance showed the revenue deficit to be 85.16 per cent of the fiscal deficit, while, the committed expenditure consumed 114.40 per cent of revenue receipts. The experts were told that Punjab had no financial resources of its own. With private-public sector investments getting crowded out this had led to unemployment and made service delivery costs disproportionate to service content and quality. And Punjab became dependent on borrowings. If there was in-built ad-hocism and indecisiveness in the administration, there was also resistance from outside and political pressures from inside to put off reforms or even additional resource mobilisation or implementation of the unpopular decisions already taken. Despite this, the government is credited with “bold’’ actions like withdrawal of “free’’ power, imposition of enhanced user-charges on several social and economic services, initiating disinvestment in public sector undertakings, efforts to compress non-productive expenditure, enactment of certain Acts to introduce accountability and smartening up of tax administration. The crop adjustment and diversification plans remain stillborn, apprehensions persist on contract farming programme and agri-processing is a non-starter. The Punjab Agricultural University is fatigued and ignoring the new areas of research, as much due to lack of motivation as paucity of money. The entire focus now is on restructuring the state electricity board in consonance with the Central Electricity Act, 2003, corporatisation of the existing board into separate holding companies with open access system at the core of unbundling process. This is intended to inject competition to ensure affordable and assured power to the consumers. Privatisation of the power sector is on the anvil. The experts wanted politicians to clearly say so to the people. The social sector is being primarily targeted for re-inventing education and health by involving panchayati raj institutions and the local government at the primary-level. The state has good infrastructure in both these sectors. But not only management and delivery systems are poor but also there is lack of accountability. The total expenditure, Plan and non-Plan, on health is meagre: 3.81 per cent of the total budget for 2003-04, while it was 4.48 per cent in the previous year and 4.51 per cent in 2001-02. In money terms, it is Rs 711.72 crore for the current financial year, against Rs 751.3 crore in 2002-03 and Rs 618.17 crore in 2001-02. It now proposed to transfer health institutions to private partners. In education, the proposed paradigm shift is from government schools to community controlled and owned schools. With more students preferring technical education, complete overhauling of the education, including technical, is required and also imparting engineering skills to dropout students for self-employment The government road map on these reforms is to involve the people. As such, the conference sought experts’ engagement in “guiding’’ the state to accelerate implementation, refine continuing programmes and mobilise resources, multilateral agencies and direct investment. In the backdrop of valuable suggestions and pointed by the experts, should not the actual follow-up become visible in the next couple of weeks? The government must clearly state the achievable short-term targets it proposed to set for itself and build up public confidence in implementation of reforms?
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Apple import worries HP farmers Mubarikpur (Patiala), July 6 According to government data about 50,000 MT of apple was imported from China, Australia, New Zealand and the USA during 2002-03. The import is likely to be doubled this year, as consumers have developed a taste for foreign apples. While the best varieties of Himachal are unable to fetch between Rs 15 and Rs 20 per kg, the imported branded apples are easily sold at Rs 100 to Rs 140 per kg in the super markets. About the reasons behind this jump in imports, Mr Vinod Sharma, the Shrontha Apple Producers Cooperative Society, Shimla, admitted, ‘‘a number of apple growers in the state are not aware about the impact of proper grading, packaging and branded marketing on their profit margins. They are still producing low quality apples, selling to middle men by packing in low quality trays and packs that lower the shelf life of the produce.’’ Mohan Fibre Products organised a meeting of apple producers from Rohroo, Chirgaon, Thanedhar, Kotgarh, Shathla and Mailan from the state today. About 100 farmers and dealers had gathered to work out strategies to get better returns from the crop. Emphasising the need to promote branded and neatly packaged apples, Mr Munishwar Kumar, Director Marketing and Business Development, said, ‘‘the farmers in Himachal Pradesh will have to come forward to improve the quality of their produce For this, they can organise themselves into co-operatives to promote branded and high-quality apples through super market chains. ’’ He added they should not use low quality trays to
transport their produce. Mr Ishwar Dass Chahawru, Former Chairman, Zila Parishad Shimla, felt that though the state government was offering up to Rs 3.25 per kg as support price, the farmers would not be able to reach the upper market segments and improve their profit margins by just concentrating on quantity of production. They would have to invest in inputs, grading, and packaging their product in the high quality trays and boxes to fetch good returns.
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Panel to address industry’s problems New Delhi, July 6 Speaking at the Annual Session of the Gurgaon Industrial Association (GIA) here, Mr Chautala said that the
government had started a special programmed called the “Sarkar Udmiyon Ke Dwar Programme” to resolve the problems of the industry. Haryana, despite being an agricultural state, had emerged as a big industrial centre as export from the state has gone up from Rs 4.5 crore in 1966 to Rs 10,000 crore generally. The small-scale industrial units had also risen from 4,500 to 80,000 units during this period. Gurgaon alone had 330 big and 9,300 small and medium units with annual turnover of Rs 35,000 crore providing
employment to 1.75 lakh people, the Chief Minister said. The construction work of the 7th and 8th unit of 250 mw each of Tau Devi Lal Thermal Power Plant in Panipat had been entrusted to BHEL and the construction of these units were expected to be completed within the next two years. The IOC was also constructing a 360 mw power plant at Panipat which would make Haryana a power surplus state in the near future, he said.
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