By Dr. Sanjeewani, Vice president, Lok Raj Sangathan
Ever since the policy of Globalisation through Liberalisation and Privatisation (known as LPG Policy) was adopted by the Rao-Manmohan Congress Government in 1991-92, governments formed by all political parties at the Centre and by most in the states have been trying to implement it because it’s the agenda of big capitalists of the country.
Intense pressure is brought on workers in public services to work for making their enterprises profitable. As a result, workers are forced to justify increases in tariffs for the services they provide, which pits them against consumers of services. This comes in the way of workers seeking support of consumers against attacks on them by government. Though privatisation is against the interest of both consumers and workers, without the support of consumers, the fight of workers against privatisation is weakened.
Exploitation of workers is increased by claiming that the service they run is not profitable:
- Vacancies are not filled and posts are surrendered permanently, due to which the workload on workers is increased to unbearable levels.
- They are forced to work way beyond their defined working hours without overtime payment, due to which the quality of service to consumers suffers.
- Consumers often end up blaming workers without knowing the facts – the intense pressure of work on workers, insufficient number of workers and inadequate provision of equipment and facilities by the government, all of which required for providing good services.
We workers should never come under this pressure! This pressure is totally unjustified. We should challenge the assertion that public services have to be run for profit! Remember that it is the duty of the government to provide these services to all at affordable rate. The government has the right to collect taxes ONLY because it has the duty to satisfy the basic needs of the people.
In this day and age, no one can deny that every human being should get not only food, clothing and housing of a decent quality, but also good quality water, sanitation, education, health facilities, transport and electricity and internet at affordable rates. It is impossible to get even basic education without electricity and internet, as was amply proven during the COVID crisis. These are the basic needs in order to be able to lead a life befitting the 21st century!
It is the duty of the government to make all necessities of life to every citizen at affordable rates!
The government spreads false propaganda that most people in the country do not pay taxes. Taxes collected by the government are of two types – direct taxes and more importantly, indirect taxes. Direct taxes like income tax are highly visible and paid by few people because most people do not earn enough to pay income tax. However, indirect taxes are paid by everyone – whenever they buy any goods or services. Indeed, we are all tax-paying citizens!
Instead of fulfilling its duty, we find that over the years, the abysmal condition and reach of public services in India has only worsened. Whether it is health, education, road maintenance, public transport, sanitation, and provision of water and so on, budget allocations as a percentage of government spending have been reducing. Public amenities like big parks, playgrounds – something that people in many other countries enjoy, are conspicuous by their absence. If they exist they are allowed to go to ruin. It has become so bad now that only those who cannot afford to spend out of their pockets avail of public health, education and transport. We do not even trust the water that comes out of public taps, but feel compelled to buy bottled water for drinking or use water filters!
Let us look at what is happening in the case of a basic necessity like electricity.
The Draft Electricity (Amendment) Bill 2025 opens up grounds for further attacks on people. There is a clause in it saying that rates must cover the true and full cost. This attack is also based on the false premise that public services should be profitable. Further there is a provision that would enable upward revision of rates every year while the real wages for most workers of the country have not risen for years.
The Bill would result in unbearable increases in electricity rates and drive electricity out of the reach of crores of our people. This would effectively mean that the government has entirely shrugged off its responsibility of making sure that all Indians are assured of basic necessities. Crores of our people would be reduced to a subhuman existence in the 21st century.
The government claims that power companies are not profitable because they are not recovering full cost of power and that they are incurring losses because they are supplying subsidised electricity to small consumers and farmers.
We workers must not accept these arguments. We know that all these arguments are given to justify privatisation. We know that it is big monopoly capitalists like Adani, Tata, Jindal, Torrent group, etc. who want electricity distribution to be privatised. The Electricity Bill 2025 fulfils their desire.
The total subsidy support by all state-owned DISCOMs for 2022–23 was Rs. 1.66 lakh crore. This benefitted crores of people. In the same year, a few thousand capitalists were ‘subsidised’ by way of write off of loans worth Rs 2.09 lakh crore by banks!
As per the government’s own admission to the Parliament in May 2025, Indian banks wrote off as much as Rs 16.35 lakh crore of loans of capitalists during the last ten financial years!
How can we accept the argument that the burden of providing subsidised electricity to crores of people cannot be afforded but a much larger amount of write off of loans to a few thousand capitalists is justified?
Moreover, the electricity subsidy amount is coming out of the indirect taxes paid by people. In 2022-23, people paid Rs. 18 lakh crore by way GST alone.
We must also remember that supply of subsidised electricity for farming does not benefit farmers personally. Supply of subsidised electricity enables the government to keep the Minimum Support Price (MSP) low, as it is based on the cost of production. In reality, most farmers do not receive even MSP for their produce. Keeping MSPs at low levels keeps food price rises of those items and thereby inflation in check. This in turn enables capitalists to keep wages paid to workers low. Thus, the real benefit of providing subsidised electricity goes to capitalists and not to farmers.
All this is in addition to a number of clauses that would make the electricity sector very lucrative for big capitalists. For instance, this Draft Bill mandates that a certain amount of power has to be purchased from renewable sources. The point is that most power generated through renewable sources like solar and wind is in the hand of private corporations.
To conclude, the assertion that public services should be profitable simply cannot be accepted. It is anti-people as well as anti-social!