Arun Shourie, India's minister for disinvestment, faced a
verbal barrage in parliament a year ago when he announced the sale
of a 51% stake in Balco, a profitable aluminium company, to Indian
company Sterlite.
The opposition Congress Party alleged that Balco had been sold for
a song and its workers went on strike, forcing a plant closure. A
combative Shourie offered to annul the sale if Congress could find
a buyer willing to pay more. It was many weeks later, after the
Supreme Court upheld the sale, that the new owners of Balco, now
saddled with a Rs2 billion ($41 million) loss, were able to move
in.
On February 5 this year Shourie announced the sale of two big
state companies - VSNL, a telecoms company whose monopoly over
international telephony ends in April, to the Tata group; and
Indo-British Petroleum (IBP), an oil-marketing company, to
state-owned Indian Oil Corporation (IOC),...
