The decision of the government to create giant entities to face competition effectively offers superficial substantiation. ONGC is already weak (Editorial – “Bigger, better?” July 21). The move to merge public sector entities to create larger entities is only to ensure that the public sector is wiped out soon. It also supports this government’s election promise of ‘minimum government, maximum governance’. The Nehruvian policy was to create a number of public sector companies to ensure growth in a state of what is called in economics as ‘Perfect Competition’. Now the policy is to merge all such companies and make it easy for a sellout or closure. One sees this in the field of general insurance too. Having opened the floodgates to private operators, there is now a plan to merge the four giant entities “to face competition effectively”.
A.G. Rajmohan,
Anantapur, Andhra Pradesh
