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Some people, it seems, never learn!

Sometimes silence speaks far louder than words. A perfect example was the recent strike by the eighty-seven thousand employees of the Uttar Pradesh State Electricity Board. No, the strikers themselves hadn't been suddenly struck dumb. But did you hear a peep from any of the Opposition parties during the strike?

Given the fact that Vidhan Sabha polls are due, you would normally have expected just about everybody else to pitch in. But there was nary a word from Mulayam Singh Yadav and his Samajwadi Party. Mayawati and her followers in the Bahujan Samaj Party were strangely silent. Even Sonia Gandhi and her poodles -- who couldn't keep their tongues from wagging even during the Kargil conflict -- decided that keeping a low profile was the best option.

There was a simple reason: every politician worth the name realises just how monumentally unpopular the striking employees are with the people of Uttar Pradesh. Even the fact that they had hurriedly wrapped themselves in the flag and were spouting the usual rubbish about "selling out to the multinationals" wasn't cutting any ice.

And why should it have? The Uttar Pradesh State Electricity Board workers lacked even the faintest sniff of an argument. The Government of Uttar Pradesh had repeatedly clarified that the salaries, even the pensions, of the current set of employees would not be put at risk; the Union Power Ministry has backed up this guarantee. So what exactly was the strike all about?

When you come right down to it, the striking employees appeared to have only two real (if unstated) demands. First, they were bitterly opposed to accepting responsibility for their act of commission and omission (chiefly the latter). Second, they did not want any change in the comfortable routines which enabled them to feather their own nests at the expense of the public.

Think about it for a minute. The Uttar Pradesh State Electricity Board is pathetically inefficient even by Indian standards; its plants operate at just 32 per cent efficiency, meaning that 68 per cent of installed capacity just goes waste. Over and above this, something between 42 per cent and 43 per cent is lost in transmission, which by the way is twice the national average. In spite of all this, Rs 500 crore (5 billion rupees) has to be shelled out every month in establishment costs.

So is it any surprise that the Uttar Pradesh State Electricity Board tots up a loss of Rs 50 crore (500 million rupees) every week? Or that it found itself drowning in red ink to the tune of over Rs 7,000 crore (70 billion rupees) by now?

A bankrupt Uttar Pradesh had no recourse but to hold out a beggar's bowl to the international lending agencies. The Union Government doesn't have any money to spare, but if you ask the World Bank for funds then you should also be prepared for some tough conditions -- as Manmohan Singh and Narasimha Rao found out in 1991. (Neither man was a natural votary of liberalisation, and the Congress still continues to be officially devoted to socialism.)

The Uttar Pradesh ministry was forced to swallow a stiff dose of reform as the price of money. The first step was the trifurcation of the inefficient Uttar Pradesh State Electricity Board; one unit would look after thermal-power generation, the second after hydro-power generation, and the third after transmission. Workers would be given specific responsibilities, not least that of stopping theft of power. And it is this which enraged the employees of the present organisation.

But how long could this situation have continued anyway? Sooner or later Uttar Pradesh would have been forced to institute reforms. In fact, I personally believe that the state has been dangerously tardy. Sadly, it is not alone; almost every state in India is dancing on the edge of bankruptcy. Reforming the bloated public sector enterprises should have begun in 1991, but Manmohan Singh was content to tinker with the stock markets rather than push hard decisions. But you cannot go on living beyond your means forever.

That is a fact reluctantly being borne home into most political parties, which is why most of them were refusing to back the Uttar Pradesh State Electricity Board workers.

Every political organisation, that is except for the one which has no presence on the ground in Uttar Pradesh (nor Rajasthan and Maharashtra); yes, that is right, the Left Front couldn't care less if India's largest state plunges into bankruptcy and/or darkness.

Some people, it seems, never learn!

T V R Shenoy