Indian government filed cases against Telecom companies like Vodafone, Airtel
and Jio saying, they have to pay tens of thousands of crores as dues. When the
same rules are applied to few other companies (called as Public Sector
Undertaking) like Power Grid Coporation, GAIL India and Oil India etc., the dues
would cross one lakh crore. But, those companies don't need to pay.
For those,
who say that, the original case was related to Telecom companies, the other
companies also bought spectrum and the exact same rules can be applied. If it is
unfair for the PSU companies, it should be unfair to Vodafone, Airtel and Jio as
well.
Of course, if government wants to change the rule, it would change to
something like, if the revenue from X business is more than Y% of the company,
then this rule is applied, and they carefully choose X and Y, in such a way
that, the companies that they want to target would fall in that category.
I
don't see BSNL in the list. Does it mean, BSNL paid all the taxes and fees as
per the rules set by the Govt, just like it set to any other private telecom
company? If it had really paid the taxes and fees as per the rules, what is the
overall profit (or loss) of BSNL? If it is in losses, does it mean, a common man
has to pay the tax/fee because of the mismanagement of the company?
All the
state governments run the buses. If any private player wants to run a bus, first
they have to get a permit. The permit amount is pretty huge. Apart from paying
the permit amount, they need to get the approval from the concerned
minister/official. That permission would cost them a lot unofficially.
Government run buses won't pay any permit fees whatsoever and obviously, they
don't need to pay any amount unofficially. But, the private bus operators have
to fight with the government run buses on the fare. On peak days, when the private
bus operators increase the fare, we would crticize them for exploiting.
Air
India is in losses. Still common man is paying for the losses of running Air
India. If the same thing happens to private operators, the company would be
closed down, like King Fisher or Jet Airways. Only the shareholders of the
company would lose and not the common man.
The profit and losses are calculated
differently for government and private companies (May be except in the sectors
that are reformed like Coal etc.). When the government industry is trying to get
something out of the natural resources, the revenue minus the expenditure is
considered as profit. Whereas, for the private industry, one has to deduct the
license fee to extract the natural resources, which is typically more than all
other expenditures. When that government industry is in Profits (on books), the
employees would fight for increase in the salaries, bonus etc., saying it is in
profits. Many times, the profit that they say the got is far less than the license
fee they would have got, had they given to a private player in fair means.
Everyone says, Private companies are exploiting. But, in reality, Government is exploiting private sector and trying to show as if the private companies are demons.
Eventhough India got partial Independence in 1991 (No. It did not get it in 1947), still
Government is trying to reduce the freedom of the companies with something or
other.