The worst-ever crisis faced by mankind has exposed the ugly face of certain sections of the private sector. Rather than rehabilitating the infected patients, private doctors have halted their ‘service’ out of the fear of self-infection. One of the reasons Covid-19 assault in India is lesser is the availability of wide infrastructure of public sector units

The unprecedented loss of life and wealth due to spread of Covid-19 has taught numerous lessons to the entire world, and India in particular. The highly revered model of economic growth based on international trade, consumerism and overexploitation of nature has failed to sustain itself.

In such times, the complete dependence on the vagary of market, and above all the withdrawal of Government from the basic public services may prove extremely fatal.

The worst-ever crisis faced by mankind has exposed the ugly face of private sector. Rather than rehabilitating the infected patients, private doctors have closed their ‘service’ to avoid self-infection. Private firms producing essential drugs, masks, and sanitisers have raised the selling prices of these necessary goods.

Most private firms are giving their workers pink slips, instead of helping them to survive in the same cities during lockdown. Private schools and colleges are not ready to offer their buildings, either for quarantining infected individuals or to accommodate migrant labours.

However, the purpose of the writing this article is to show that how BSNL, a public sector unit which Government is planning to sale, is helping the country during crisis.

Since prevention is the best cure for Covid-19, when most of the means of communication are on hold, mobile phones could be the most effective tool to create awareness among masses. That is why the Department of Telecommunication issued an advisory to all telecom companies to provide awareness related to Covid-19 through caller tune.

Unfortunately, most of the private telecom companies did not pay any heed to the advisory for a long time as they were aware of the possible loss of profits earned through caller tunes. Moreover, BSNL and MTNL were the first ones to start spreading awareness through caller tune. They also announced extension of validity period of their prepaid mobile services till April, 20 and in addition offered `10 additional talk time even after zero balance to ensure connectivity.

Now the question arises: Can we measure the awareness campaign by BSNL to stop further spread of Covid-19 and help the poor by giving free talk time merely in terms of money?

Sadly, the Government has been arguing for long disinvesting in BSNL just on the basis of monetary losses, ignoring its possible usefulness at the time of crisis.

However, the opponents of disinvestment, are citing many reasons for the losses in BSNL i.e. lack of corporate governance, accountability and incentive mechanism, slow decision making, unaggressive market policy, less aggressive market skills, unhealthy practices adopted by private players, Government interference, nepotism and bribing of government officials by rival private players in delay of schemes.

Further, there are some institutional reasons as well, which are responsible for the damage caused to BSNL. The use of BSNL’s infrastructure by rival private players at a negligible price and strategic blunder of transferring unqualified employees at the time of formation of BSNL are the strategic institutional reasons for its failure. Cheap mobile internet connections to politicians and Government employees also drained its resources.

Looking back at the history, we will find that BSNL stood as a top performer among all PSUs in 2003 but came down to be the worst one by 2014.

In the first half of the 2000s, the main reason for its increase in profit was the expansion of telephonic services all over the country. It was in the later half that BSNL started losing its monopoly due to tough competition given by private players despite the fact that its landline infrastructure reached the remotest areas. By 2010, the company was caught up in heavy losses and bore the same fate in the following years as well.

However, despite availability of mobile number portability and expensive services provided by the BSNL, customers have not hitherto abandoned it. Unlike private players, BSNL does not indulge in offering various deceptive schemes just to attract customers.

It is due to the transparency of BSNL that despite poor marketing, customer share is falling at a slow rate. Perhaps, public faith is still very high in BSNL, that is why BSNL has added around 9 lakh new mobile customers, taking its total subscriber base to 11.62 crore till February, 2019.

It has happened at the time when BSNL is still providing 3G services while others have shifted to 4G.

Historically, BSNL has been institutionally damaged by the Government itself. It can be understood by an information obtained through RTI from Alwar district office of BSNL which reveals that on  January 1, 2015, there wasn’t even a single employee at the post of lineman and mechanic who had any degree/diploma in science or technology.

While the same for JE/JTO/SEO/SDE and DE/DGM/GM were 71 per cent and 25 per cent respectively. This was simply because when BSNL was founded, a lot of non-technical employees of Department of Telecommunication were transferred to BSNL. More so, majority of them were absorbed in technical positions i.e. lineman, phone mechanic, engineers and managers.

Since the nature of technology used in telecommunication is highly volatile and fast changing, the technically qualified staff finds it difficult to comprehend or communicate the problems at hand to the senior officials who are not technically qualified. Even the employees at lower levels of a technical work, like a lineman, also faces trouble when dealing with the public.

Moreover, a lot of Government policies have directly or indirectly disfavoured BSNL. For instance, only Jio or other private players’ connections were provided to farmers and students, under Digital India scheme.

Even TRAI has also favoured Jio by allowing it to run its free scheme. Similarly, BSNL was deliberately not allowed to participate in the auction of 4G. Though, BSNL was made a separate company but it could never free itself from Government, especially DoT in its decision making. Its social obligations are very high. Whenever an MLA or an MP demands network in an area where number of households are very less, where private players are not interested, and the ratio of profit to cost is as low as 0.001 per cent, the Government resorts to BSNL.

Similarly, BSNL is made to continue landline phone services in some areas where it is completely unprofitable for them. Such restrictions cannot be imposed on private players.

A look at the previous trend in oil corporations, Navratana companies, railways and airports shows that the announcement of privatisation came soon after the huge investment was made in the improvement of their infrastructure. There is an apprehension among BSNL employees that its massive investment in the Bharat Fiber scheme (to connect all the panchayats with internet network) may also meet the same fate or may be sold to Jio.

Interestingly, a lot of loss of BSNL is due to outstanding due on Reliance Jio which is `167.97 crore.

Thus, the outbreak of Covid-19 has provided us the opportunity to rethink our policy to disinvest in PSUs. One of the reasons why India has been comparatively less affected from Covid-19, despite all odds like high density of population, poor education, delay in preventive measures, mass movement of casual labourers and return of high number of infected persons from abroad, is due to India’s massive “public” infrastructure in health, banking, telecommunication and transport. Once all public sector  units are sold, it will be difficult to rebuild them, and India will not be able to cope with similar kind of crisis in the future.

(Anish Gupta teaches economics at Delhi University. Shaveta Kohli teaches economics at Central University of Jammu.)