A New Era Blasts Off

June 27

A New Era Blasts Off

Saswato Das

A new type of editorial I would say and certainly something that points towards a concept that has till date been thought of to be rather unrealistic.

We are talking about the privatization of some of the biggest enterprises of a country. Here in focus was space travel. The first dream of a lot of toddlers and the biggest to many who grow up to be in it. The recently launched Dragon-X unmanned spacecraft by a company called Space Explorations Technologies (Space-X) was the center of discussion in this editorial. Dragon-X recorded itself in history by becoming the first privately developed spacecraft to make a successful space expedition and return in full health. It certainly did markup to be the "blast off of a new era". And that metaphor has come by to be looked upon by a lot of other industries. Here, this particular event does not simply point towards the privatization of space travel, but it is also points out the great possibility that the current services that a government is providing to its people can be done better by private organizations and this therefore leaves more room for the government to provide us with the services that matter more.

The postal service is one big example. Private organizations can provide a huge leap in the postal industry with very viable and functional implications and can possible, according to my logic, do better than the current government operated post. To add to this, such industries can be monitored by the government in order to prevent and misuse of power by the companies. Apart from post there are several other industries that private companies can play a vital role in.

This not only provides better functionality for the people, and less burden on the government but this also helps in the upbringing of a nation that has state of the art technology available to the lowest section of the society.

We can get better cities, better postal services, better logistics, more integrated and accessible telecomm networks (part of which are already there but we lag to a great extent compared to the international market) and many more innovative ideas that may crop up in the process.

It therefore goes without saying that privatization of industries can definitely lead to a better governance of the people make the country a much more resourceful place.

Although it has to be considered, simultaneously with these applications, that the increase in the cost of day to day facilities does not crumble the common man. This of course in the first place requires a very stable economy which has a considerable overprice tolerance. As such, the current overprice tolerance of this economy is negligible, which makes us very vulnerable to a downfall, and which in fact is the case right now.

To sum it up, privatization is a very good idea to be implemented but we first need to strengthen the economy, give the rupee some back, give our citizens more room to accept a change.