When India achieved independence in 1947, it had little money and a mammoth task ahead, that of building a nation. The businessmen of that time were people who had lived on the support of the British and flourished. India had no industry to boast of. It was a country that had been stripped by the British of all its wealth.
Over the next 75 years, we Indians have worked hard to take the country on the brink of becoming a leading economic power.
When capital was scarce, the leaders of yore built India brick by brick, creating infrastructure from whatever meager resources that were available. The leaders built institutions using tax money that came from the people of the country and put together Public Sector Units when no businessman worth his salt was willing to invest in any long gestation project. No businessman would have ever invested in something like Bhakra Nangal Dam or IIT or IIM or even AIIMS. It was the vision of our leaders, fresh out of slavery, that created these institutions. They created organizations such as HAL (Hindustan Aeronautics Limited), ISRO, BARC, BHEL (Bharat Heavy Electrical Limited) and invested in creating AIR and Door Darshan such that information could flow to the people. Organizations such as BSNL (Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd) and VSNL (Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited) were created out of tax money contributed by people of the country (the money which the British were earlier stealing and taking away to England). Oil PSU’s like ONGC, IOC, BPCL, Indian Oil were all created to fuel the nation’s growth. PSU refineries were created to process crude oil.
These were the formative years, when no businessman was interested in making these investments. Our leaders created these PSU’s and nurtured them.
Then came a time when the country started to prosper, the seeds that were planted started to bear fruits. Businessmen started to prosper too. They wanted a piece of the action. The population was now in a position to buy products and services.
They wanted to rule the air waves and enter areas that were now ripe. Greedy politicians then came into the picture. They started to destroy the PSU’s such that private businessmen could enter the same field and make money for themselves rather than the country making a profit.
The politicians deliberately reduced the funding available to PSU’s. BSNL/MTNL are glaring example of how these two companies were destroyed for the benefit of private telecom players.
Door Darshan too was systematically destroyed in favor of DTH and Cable Television operators. But now DTH and Cable TV operators face a new challenge, that of OTT (Over the Top Media). OTT is available over Internet.
In the UK, public broadcasters like BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 are all coming together to offer their live broadcasts over the Internet. People will no longer requires an antenna to receive their live broadcasts. These Public Broadcasters are fighting back. They have launched a platform together called ‘Freely’ where all their programs will be available to anyone accessing television over Internet. Their revenue will come from advertisement as they hope to be able to get people back to their channels by offering them better content and live content.
As long as greedy politicians are there, we can not expect such a thing to happen in India. Door Darshan is now available via a Free Dish but it has not been allowed to go high definition. Programming on Door Darshan is poor, even Cricket matches that India plays are no longer available on DD as BCCI sells these rights to other broadcasters for a lot of money. How can DD compete with private television channels that offer high quality content delivered at high resolution?
Our PSU’s can only prosper and regain their glory if they are not systematically destroyed by greedy politicians and crony capitalists.
