It must be awful to be in G.V. Ramakrishna's shoes. Two days before the term of the Disinvestment Commission and its chief comes to an end, and six weeks after its members put in their resignations to allow the new government to recast the commission, the authorities still haven't decided whether or not to accept these. Now surely that sends out a very loud and negative signal about the manner in which the government treats supposedly independent advisory bodies.

And even if the government does decide to grant a fresh lease of life to Ramakrishna and his colleagues -- after all, there are a `full' 48 hours left, and the government traditionally derives its powers from keeping people dangling -- there's no guarantee the Commission will get any reasonable powers to monitor the disinvestment process. But without any powers to monitor or influence the disinvestment process, there's no point in Ramakrishna accepting any extension.

Ramakrishna, you see, is no papertiger, who believes his job is simply to rationalise what the government wants. Naturally, he's fallen foul of the authorities time and again. In fact, this is why Prime Minister Vajpayee who has to decide on the matter, is getting completely conflicting advice on Ramakrishna. Keep him as he's very competent, say one group of advisors; sack him since he obeys no one, says another.

Ramakrishna has given disinvestment recommendations that haven't been quite what the government wanted on IPCL, for instance, the Commission said that it should not be sold to a company (read Reliance Industries) that will get a monopoly as a result. This caveat was subsequently dropped by the Cabinet, when it approved the sale of IPCL to a strategic partner.

Similarly, whenever he's felt the government's doing something wrong, he's gone ahead and aired his view, solicited or not. In October 1997, when the United Front was close to selling GA-IL's shares, Ramakrishna pointed out in writing that the price was too low and thatit would be foolish to sell at this price. Unsurprisingly, in January 1998, the government stripped the Commission of its powers to render advice unless specifically asked for. In fact, when the BJP came to power, the Commission made it clear that it would resign if it was not given more powers. At that time, Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha assured them this would be done, but nothing changed materially.

And when he's been ignored, Ramakrishna's made it very clear, and public, that he's being fooled around with, and will not take it lying down. Almost each report of his gives details of which recommendations have been accepted by the government, and which haven't.

Look at the statistics yourself, and you'll appreciate how shoddily the government has treated the Commission. It has given recommendations for 53 public sector units, but only 21 have been accepted. It has recommended that 32 units be sold to strategic partners, but decisions have been taken for only 9 units. Similarly, the Commission hadrecommended that 4 units be closed but the government has accepted only one of these.

What's embarrass-ed, and angered, this government, is that Ramakrishna continues to function quite unfettered. When the controversy hotted up, during the BJP's previous tenure, of whether or not aircraft should be bought for Air India, Ramakrishna argued it ma-de sense to abide by the Commission's recommendations, select a strategic partner for the airline first, and then let this strategic partner select the aircraft. Later, he wrote to the government stating that (then) Finance Secretary's Special Purpose Vehicle scheme for disinvestment was full of holes. Ramakrishna was also very vocal in his criticism of the (previous) BJP government's decision to force oil sector PSUs to shell out Rs 6,500 crore to buy part of the government's equity in other oil PSUs, and pointed out that this was nothing but forcing the PSUs to cover the government's deficit. It didn't help that the stock market agreed with this and knocked off Rs24,000 crore from the market value of these companies within a few weeks.

More recently, a couple of days ago, the Disinvestment Commission chief has ridiculed Power Minister Rangarajan Kumaramangalam's statement that the public sector NTPC has been asked to pay Rs 4,500 crore to buy another public sector power company, NHPC he argued that this was not disinvestment, but was designed simply to bridge the fiscal gap.

With such a track record, it's not surprising that several within the government are keen to see the current Commission disbanded. For it's now, in the actual implementation of the recommendations, that there is scope for favouritism. This newspaper has, for instance, pointed out on various occasions (Nov 6, Oct 20) that the Sotheby's-style open auction that some bureaucrats and ministers are in favour of, actually help the bidder rather than the government. Similarly, as the recent GAIL controversy shows, the current system of disinvestment through the Core Group is very inefficient, andlowers the value the government gets for its shares. Obviously then, it is vital that Prime Minister Vajpayee appoints an independent Disinvestment Commission to monitor the process, and ensures that he gives it enough powers to do its job -- even if he doesn't feel it fit to extend the term of the current Commission. He'll obviously fall foul of several of his advisors while doing so, but then a Prime Minister has to act tough sometimes.