‘Disinvestment’: upholding the interests of the big monopoly capitalists

The UPA government is going ahead with the privatization program (also known as ‘disinvestment’) of major public sector undertakings in various vital sectors of the economy, that was started by the previous NDA government. People’s Voice has pointed out time and again that this ‘disinvestment’ is a thoroughly anti-national, anti-social program aimed at enhancing the super profits of the big monopoly capitalists, at the expense of the land, labour and resources of our nation and people. This has been confirmed once again by the recent audit report of the Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG), which was tabled in Parliament.

As reported by the PTI on August 25, the CAG audit has revealed “undervaluation of a number of PSUs, including Balco and VSNL, where equity was disinvested”. (See Box)

What these facts once again point out is that the entire program of privatization of public sector enterprises has as its central aim, not any restructuring of the economy in the interests of the people of India, but the interests of the biggest monopolies in plundering the land, labour, natural resources and wealth created by the people, for super profits. That is why assets created by the people in the form of PSUs are being sold off for a song to the biggest monopolies, without any consultation with the workers or the public, while the workers are being mercilessly thrown out of their jobs in the prime of their working lives with little or no compensation in some cases or forced to accept VRS in others.

Voice of Modern Food Industries workers went unheeded

As has been reported earlier in People’s Voice, over the last 6 years, the workers of Modern Food Industries Private Limited, led by the Modern Food Industries Employees Union, had waged a relentless struggle against the privatization of the company and handing over of its assets to Hindustan Lever Limited. In numerous petitions to the Prime Minister, President, Labour Minister, HRD Minister, Industries Minister and others, they had exposed how the assets of MFIL, a profit making PSU, were grossly undervalued at the time of selling off its shares to HLL, how the land worth over 200 crores was not valued at all, how the workers were never consulted and the terms of the disinvestment were never revealed before them, how flourishing units were shut down and dismantled, how the union leaders were being victimized on trumped-up charges in order to undermine their struggle, how the workers and their families were traumatized and pressurized to accept VRS, give up the struggle and quit.

Due to the persistent struggle of the MFIL workers, the Prime Minister of the previous NDA government, Vajpayee had to appoint a special committee to look into the issue of irregularities in the privatization of MFIL. All the above facts, with substantial evidence, were placed before the Prime Minister’s special committee, which sumbitted its report to the government. Despite repeated demands by the workers, this report was neither tabled in parliament let alone discussed, either by the vajpayee government or the Manmohan Singh government.

The fact that the CAG is now bringing out these ‘irregularities’ in the privatization process of PSUs and criticizing the previous NDA government (which is no longer in power and therefore cannot be held to account) merely shows once again that the so-called ‘system of checks and balances’, including the CAG, that the bourgeoisie tries to portray as signs of “democracy” and “good governance”, is not meant to defend the interests of the working people or to protect the loot and cruel exploitation of the wealth and resources of our society by the big monopoly capitalists. Instead, it is meant to foster the illusion that “the system can be relied upon”, that the crimes attributed to one particular government of one party or coalition can be corrected by bringing to power another government of a different party or coalition representing the interests of the same ruling class, the big bourgeoisie. It is also a tool for the bourgeoisie parties to accuse each other of corrpution and score brownie points.

The workers in the PSUs that are threatened with privatization and the entire working class all over India are seeing through this deceipt of the state of the big bourgeoisie and are intensifying their struggle against the treacherous anti-national, anti-social and anti-people course of privatization that the UPA government is continuing to pursue with such zeal.