Privatization of Public Sector

Privatization of public sector implies buying of the government owned units by private companies for increasing profits. In simpler terms it means 'disinvestment'. It normally occurs when the government is unable to make profit out of a particular unit under it's control, or the unit is incurring heavy losses or if it is unable to provide the bare minimum services to the people. All this causes the government to sell the unit to a private firm as it is unable to handle the unit efficiently and is incurring heavy losses. The question then arises 'Is privatization actually beneficial in long terms?' 'Should there be a limit to disinvestment?' To find the answers to our above queries let us develop a further insight in the issue.

The best example we have of privatization today is the Telecom sector. Gone are the days when we had just the BSNL or the MTNL landlines phones at our homes. Today we get to choose from a variety of telecom players be it AIRTEL,RELIANCE or any other telecom brand ,the king of the market today is 'the customer'. It is we who choose our telecom service provider depending on the call rates and the services provided by the telecom company. We no longer are a kin to pay the magnanimous phone bills we once used to ,call rates have gone down and no longer do we have to think twice before making a STD call. If we see in terms of services we don't have to wait for minutes for making a successful phone call. The lines or the routes are no more busy(provided you have a good service provider),though the numbers still may be! All this was possible because of privatization. And it happened with the introduction of mobile services. The government was unable to provide these services in the entire country as it had been struggling with the landlines already. It opened it's arms to privatization and we reaped the benefits! Do you know there are still some places in north eastern India where only the IDEA phones work ,leave alone the other brands these places do not even have a BSNL tower!

Another example of privatization is the buying of PSU's (public sector units) by companies as RELIANCE. Thanks to privatization, today we have petrol pumps at very small distances on a highway, ensuring that an ongoing vehicle never runs out of fuel, not only this but buying of the LPG gas cylinders have become a lot easier .

Not only this we have privatization in the education sector as well. Not only the CBSE today we have the ICSE and the various state boards to choose from and if that is not enough we have the open schools offering various courses. Besides this most of the schools in India today are private and we all are a strong evidence of it.