As someone relatively uninterested in who ends up ruling Uttar Pradesh or Punjab while other political pundits puzzled last week over the permutations and configurations of future governments, I found myself wandering through the dreary corridors of the Planning Commission. This crumbling edifice of Indian socialism is for me the symbol of all that is wrong with the way India is governed, so wandering through its corridors is not something I usually like to do. What took me there were rumours that something significant and surprisingly unobserved was going on within.

In a discreetly elegant room in Yojana Bhavan's otherwise decaying atmosphere, Arun Shourie is quietly working at bringing about what could be the most important change India has seen in decades. If he succeeds it will, in my view, make the difference between whether we are a rich country in 20 years or one still impoverished by the profligacy of our governments. The change he is charged with bringing about goes by the name of disinvestment. A word the Indian government had to invent because mere mention of privatisation causes socialist hackles to rise. Since socialism is still the abiding faith of most of our political class, even privatisation in the guise of disinvestment has hardly been possible, and for a long time all that the government managed to sell was one decrepit bakery. This despite the fact that the government is too poor to build the schools, hospitals and roads the country desperately needs because it spends 70 per cent of the money we pay in taxes on interest on its borrowings. It borrows mainly to waste more money on running and reviving industries that it would have been forced to close down or sell had it been a businessman in the private sector.

When Shourie became minister for disinvestment he tried speeding things up by pushing through the sale of BALCO, and was not only accused of bribery and corruption by the Congress but also taken to court. Luckily for us, the Supreme Court took a stern view of a case that it said should never have been brought before it: there was nothing wrong at all with the sale of BALCO, the judges said, and they would be grateful if people did not misuse the instrument of the PIL (public-interest litigation) on needless litigation.

Since this judgement, there has been less public hysteria when the Government tries to sell off what our socialist pals still delude themselves into thinking of as the family silver. There are now 22 transactions under way and in the foreseeable future mighty public-sector icons like Maruti and Air-India could also be in private hands. But there is still huge opposition from vested interests ranging from cabinet ministers and senior political figures to ordinary workers and newspaper editors. So, when Paradeep Phosphates was privatised recently, Oriya journalists bemoaned the loss of what they claimed was a fine, profitable company. The truth is that this company, in which Rs 400 crore of taxpayers' money has been invested, is now worth Rs 1.2 crore with debts of Rs 1,140 crore. Should we waste any more money on it?

Should we, for that matter, waste money running the Ashok Hotel when it spends Rs 52 crore for every Rs 41 crore that it earns? Of the 31 hotels that the India Tourism Development Corporation runs, only one makes a small profit, but every time the Disinvestment Ministry has tried to rid us of these hotels there is huge resistance from within the Government itself. Do you know why? Because if these hotels are privatised, it would make it impossible for ministers and other officials to live in the style to which they have become accustomed: free meals, free accommodation and, according to some estimates, a vital source of income since money is made on virtually every purchase.

Quite simply we cannot afford this any more. Nor can we afford to try and have any more revival packages as they have already cost taxpayers Rs 40,000 crore without one public-sector company showing signs of revival. Besides, is there not something bizarre in sheer business terms of an investment of Rs 200,000 crore being made for the benefit of 2 million public-sector workers?
Think of the schools this money could build. Think of how many more villages could get clean drinking water and decent roads, how many cities could be provided proper sewage systems and decent housing. These are the things we should expect from our elected representatives, not whether they can run steel factories or luxury hotels. If the Disinvestment Ministry succeeds in what it is doing it could be the most significant contribution of the Vajpayee Government.

The opposition even from within the Government continues, though, to be strenuous, and rumour has it that if a sale goes through it is generally because it has the prime minister's personal backing. If this is true, and it appears to be, then as someone who has often attacked A.B. Vajpayee's somnolent approach to governance, may I this week salute him.