Qualms of conscience of partners in crime came to nought with Prime Minister Vajpayee asserting that disinvestment would continue and the pretenders confessing that they were only demanding a mid-term appraisal. If anything it only proved that their treachery is conscious while their opposition is pretentious.

There is something amiss when RSS functionaries and their hangers-on like Fernandes claim to raise the issue of disinvestment. They have covered themselves with infamy by their large-scale plunder of governmental resources and public exchequer. Whether Tehelka, or Petrol Pump allotments, or land allotments, these self-serving volunteers, i.e. swayamsewaks, have made the corrupt dinosaurs of Congress look like pygmies. It is the diabolical designs of RSS that while cornering the largesse of being in govt. they wish to make the people believe that they have nothing to do with it. While helping the foreign powers in large-scale loot of our natural resources and labour power, they would feign to be patriots. That is all about “party with a difference.” While immersed neck-deep in worldly material pleasures, they lecture about being above worldly concerns.

In the past too, RSS functionaries have heckled the direction of economic policies being pursued by Vajpayee Govt., only to agree later and extract their pound of flesh in the process. These toothless wonders and spineless ‘patriots’ have been hard bargainers if the posts filled by them and largesse cornered by them are any indication.

The immediate issue of contention was privatization of oil majors, HPCL and BPCL. Long back, in order to sell privatization, the then Central Govt. of Narasimha Rao–Manmohan Singh had made misleading claims of reviving the sick and loss making units with infusion of private capital mostly foreign capital. The lie was soon buried and it became clear that private businesses are only interested in taking over the profit making ones and not the loss making ones. When even that did not click as MNCs and domestic big business houses were not willing to shell out the huge amounts that were the market value of the profit making PSUs, came the ‘strategy’ of disinvestment through strategic sales, that is, giving over the management control along with certain proportion of shares. All this really amounts to handing over these PSUs, without the buyers being made to buy them in necessary proportion.

All this demonstrates that underlying the privatization of profit making PSUs is not any sound economic proposition. It is primarily a political question of the direction taken by the Indian ruling classes at the dictates of their imperialist masters. Mr. Vajpayee himself admitted this the other day, saying that India could not prosper in isolation in a globalizing world. By this he meant that Indian Govt. could ill-afford to ignore the demands of WTO and the imperialist powers behind this brutally unequal international trade order.

In fact the Indian big business and the media controlled by them has made the question of ‘globalization’ i.e., freedom to foreign capital in the country, a ‘settled’ one. They scoff at all opposition to WTO and imperialist capital. Even the days of demand of ‘level playing field’ are bygones. This is being raised now by medium and small industries. The big business is swimming in the flow of foreign capital trying to make the most of it as a junior partner in the loot and plunder of the country. They know that the deluge will fall to the share of the poor Indians in whose name the captains of comprador industry and subservient politics are making their day.

The issue of privatization of oil majors has been sought to be settled by permitting PSUs like ONGC to also bid for them. What a ‘compromise’! But what else can you expect from these cronies. The whole issue seemed to be that, when the PSUs to be privatized are major, let the commission too be higher and its distribution wider. After all, sale of oil majors is a major burden on their conscience which needs some oiling to not let the dirt on their faces bother them. And there hangs the tale of their opposition.