No Shady Deals Please

W ith the advent of liberalization, privatization and globalization — once aptly termed as ‘LPG’ by former Chief Election Commissioner TN Seshan — in remote regions of the country like the Northeast, there has been a spurt in the growth of pressure groups of all hues across the region to oppose and stall entry of private players in various projects. There are two fundamental reasons for this: (1) the society in general still suffers from the hangover of the ‘great’ public sector era when it was supposed to reach the ‘commanding heights’ of the country’s economy, and (2) the State governments have been notorious in wheeling-dealing with shady firms in the name of privatization. While the public sector versus private sector debate is slowly dying down as a kind of non-issue in large parts of the country and the northeasterners too are no longer as hostile to the idea of private investments, the lack of people’s confidence on the small-time politicians and bureaucrats running the State governments has today emerged as a major issue in the matter of investments by private players. And there are reasons for the people to be really worried about — what with a whole range of infrastructure projects involving huge investments lined up for grabs by as long a queue of private parties for the politicians to choose from. Successive governments in Meghalaya had had to lose the last 10 years in the name of building power projects because the people would stall every such project entered with private parties. Worse still, the government would not dare to come clean before the people that there was nothing shady in the ventures finalized. A similar scenario prevailed in Arunachal Pradesh till very recently. In Assam too, the Karbi-Langpi hydroelectric project got bogged down in an unending row for nearly three decades over the selection of promoters by the State government. There is today not even an iota of doubt in the minds of the people that there had been shady underhand deals in all such projects.

But more than the established fact of the shady deals, it is the inaction of the government to punish the guilty politicians, bureaucrats and others involved which has severely shaken the confidence of the people on governance itself. The politician takes the convenient plea that if the people find any wrongdoing, they would punish the politician by voting him out in the next election. And wonder of wonders, the government too accepts the logic in good grace! And once the politician escapes, the rest of the culprits too get off the hook. This apart, projects, particularly the ones related to power, have been drawn up without regard to the threat to environment and the people at large in the future. There have been legitimate protests against such hastily drawn-up projects, accentuated by the deafening silence of the government on the allegations. It is not for nothing that new pressure groups and organizations are sprouting up across the Northeast to stall various privately funded projects. And as is the case in such situations, most of these organizations would take recourse to means fair and foul, fouling up the entire investment ambience. Ironically, this affects the common man more than the investors themselves, while the government sits pretty. Why does the government not feel the compunction to act transparently in all such matters, particularly when it knows that at the root of all this is its shady deals and hush-hush manner of functioning in matters of projects involving huge investments? Even huge Central PSUs have been caught for shady deals in joint ventures with foreign firms. It is time a transparent system of finalizing all such deals was put in place without further delay. THE SENTINEL