Re: Privatization of ‘strategic assets’
There are privately owned steel mills (if not as big as PSM). Railway lines come under infrastructure which the government should plan. Otherwise we’ll have a hotchpotch of irrelevant infrastructure projects. Yes, the operations of such infrastructure should be privatized but regulated by government (like telecoms).
The question is that is it acceptable that a few buyers get several million rupees of benefits by buying these assets as lower than that price these assets should fetch? I am pretty much sure that no government would let go an opportunity like this to get kickbacks.
I think it is still better if, say, cronies and people close to the government benefit one time and take over these organizations rather than the nation bearing the cost of inefficiently running them every year.