Do episodes like really derail your conviction in PSEs or would you say that the government is right on its course after Air India privatisation to bring in the disinvestment juggernaut kicking in ready to roll and they will not commit such episodes or mistakes anytime soon again?
Honestly speaking, it only reinforces my conviction, it does not deviate at all because even the government of India can respond in less than 12 hours and admit that it was a freaky error. A detailed press note is being released that doing any of this, we will have to keep in mind the interest of minority shareholders. This is absolute music to my ears as far as PSUs are concerned.
A mistake can be made by anyone, why only government companies? Many times, private companies make mistakes even more glaring than this. The fact that they have admitted, acknowledged and corrected very swiftly, proves that there is clear cut recognition on the government side, that a fair amount of wealth needs to be created on these enterprises.
Out of 100 listed companies, even if it was for a genuine reason, that does not make the rest of 99 companies look bad. And the other thing is one does not have to look at one action, one has to look at collective action as to what the government has been doing for the last 12 months, how this disinvestment of Air India which had been hanging for years and years has finally got done. Let us celebrate this moment and there is nothing for me to think that this whole disinvestment process will not be taken forward.
It is a democracy; things take time. Let us understand what happened in the UK when the disinvestment happened between the 1980s and 1990s. The GDP which was at minus for years, got 5% plus for 10 years in a row because they had a massive, very profitable disinvestment for the whole economy. So I am very positive and I have no reason to believe that the government has any ill intention to do anything of this kind again. It was just a freak error and it is very heartening for someone like me to see that they corrected it so swiftly.
