Doing Business is none of the Government’s Business.

Generally speaking, two types of businesses are carried out in almost all countries of the world.  These two types are, the businesses carried out by the Government organizations and the businesses carried out by the Private organizations or individuals. A third type of businesses is Public-Private Partnership which is comparatively a new concept. Businesses run by the government organizations are called Public Sector businesses because these businesses are carried out with the public money generated by the government through taxes collected from public. The Private sector or the corporate sector is run with the wealth of the private businessmen. In some cases, the government organizations collaborate with the private businessmen or organizations in the form of public-private partnership on mutually agreed terms and conditions under certain rules. Over the years we have observed that the public sector organizations are running constantly in loss whereas the private sector organizations flourish year by year. The public-private partnership ventures are however a mix up of successes and failures. If we study the failure of the public sector and success of the private sector, the reasons thereof are very visible. In the public sector organizations, the officials and workers hardly own their respective organizations. Due to job security and fixed salaries irrespective of their performance, the officials of government organizations, rarely bother about the performance and output of their organization. Once someone gets job in a government organization it is next to impossible to oust him from service due to complex service rules and a chain of multiple appellate forums available for the ousted official. In these organizations a number of officials are also stuffed by the political parties with their supporters, sometimes ignoring the eligibility and merit criteria. The politicians then protect the interests of these officials and vice versa. Rule of ‘right person for the right job’ is rarely considered by the managers of government organizations. Unfortunately, there is no culture of feeling pain on the wastage of resources in the government offices. Costly energy in the form of electricity and gas is wasted lavishly. On top of it, the Labour Unions which exist in most of the government organizations instead of doing welfare of the workers or of the organization, all the time remain busy in search of due or undue benefits of the office bearers and leaders of the Unions. Union leaders, office bearers and union activists hardly perform their official duties and most of the time waste time and resources of the organization in unproductive activities. During my thirty-four-year long government service, this is my personal observation that only 30 to 40% of the officials actually do work in the organizations, and the officials who work at all, they work for only 30 to 40% time of their duty hours, with some exceptions of course. The good workers are rarely rewarded for their hard work and dedication, so the employees find hardly any incentive to give their best.  Lengthy decision-making steps by the layer by layer hierarchies of officers also contribute towards failures of these organizations. Most of these organizations are found complaining of scarcity of funds to give justification for their poor performances. The allocated funds are not optimally utilized to get maximum out of it. In the big installations of the headquarters of different departments, constructed over Acres of precious lands, having fleets of dozens and sometimes hundreds of vehicles, costly furniture and fixtures, utility bills, salaries, emoluments, welfare funds, so on and to forth, billions of rupees are required to run the organizations but when we see the output and service delivery of these organizations to the public, the results are mostly disappointing. Most of these organizations show annual losses which are met out from the national exchequer every year. The losses of many big government organizations have now been piled up over the years and reached to the level of hundreds of billion rupees. In order to make up these losses and to run these organizations, governments are compelled to spend huge amounts of their budgets on these white-elephants, sparing meager amounts of funds for the welfare and development projects.

On the other hand, when we study the Private sector organizations, we observe that in these organizations best workers having desired qualifications, experience and aptitude are selected for their jobs. The owners or chief executives or other authorities are vested with complete powers to hire and fire the employees as and when required to do so. The workers who work & perform better as per key performance indicators, are rewarded with promotions, financial benefits and other incentives whereas the poor performers are shunted out of the organization. In these organizations the wastage of resources is not tolerated and every employee is made to own the organization for their own welfare and welfare of the organization. An atmosphere of competition is created for the internal and external customer satisfaction. Decision-making in private sector organizations is swift and smart as per requirement of the market and opportunities for the business. Sufficient funds are provided and optimum utilization of funds and time is ensured to get the desired results. Vision and mission of the organizations are clear and known to every employee. Long-term and short-term policies are devised to achieve the goals which are set by the organization from time to time. Resultantly these organizations grow and flourish steadily. Examples of failures of government organizations and success of private organizations are not very difficult to find around us. So, it can be said without any hesitation that doing business is none of the Government’s business. The businesses should be handed over to private organizations, but this does not mean that the government should allow the private sector to do whatever it wants to do, to extract the undue profits by exploitation of their customers. It is also not advisable that government should turn its back towards the private organizations, rather it should be mandatory responsibility of government to make effective rules & regulations to keep a vigilant eye over the private sector so that private organizations cannot exploit the public for their undue profits. It is therefore suggested that while privatizing the government organizations, the government must establish regulatory authorities to keep a check on the affairs of the private organizations, and frame well thought rules and regulations in collaboration with the stakeholders. Government should provide conducive and congenial environment for private businesses. Government should ensure “ease of doing business” by taking all necessary measures to encourage private sector to provide high quality, cost effective products and services. The government should interfere in the affairs of the businesses only up to the extent of ensuring quality, pricing formulae of products/services, audits and taxation on the incomes of the organizations as per regulatory and other rules as laid down by the Government. Government should also watch the welfare of the employees and people of the society. In this way the businesses would grow and contribute in the economy of the country. More over the government would be freed from the liabilities of government sector organizations to concentrate more on good governance, better public policies and welfare/development projects.