The decision of the government to create giant entities to face competition effectively offers superficial substantiation. ONGC is already weak (Editorial – “Bigger, better?” July 21). The move to merge public sector entities to create larger entities is only to ensure that the public sector is wiped out soon. It also supports this government’s election promise of ‘minimum government, maximum governance’. The Nehruvian policy was to create a number of public sector companies to ensure growth in a state of what is called in economics as ‘Perfect Competition’. Now the policy is to merge all such companies and make it easy for a sellout or closure. One sees this in the field of general insurance too. Having opened the floodgates to private operators, there is now a plan to merge the four giant entities “to face competition effectively”.
Cracking the whip on 10 State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs) for ad-hoc appointments, the National Green Tribunal has ordered the termination of Chairpersons of these regulatory authorities. The concerned states are Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Rajasthan, Telangana, Haryana, Maharashtra and Manipur. The order was given last week by the principal bench of the NGT, chaired by Justice Swatanter Kumar. The recent order of June 8, 2017, comes as a follow-up to an NGT judgment given in August 2016. In that judgment, the NGT had issued directions on appointments of Chairmen and Member Secretaries of the SPCBs, emphasising on crucial roles they have in pollution control and abatement. It then specified required qualifications as well as tenure of the authorities. States were required to act on the orders within three months and frame Rules for appointment [See Box: Highlights of the NGT judgment of 2016 on criteria for SPCB chairperson appointment]. Having ...
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