Efficiency and the private sector go hand in hand, right? And profit and the private sector are the obverse and the reverse of the same coin, right?

Dead wrong.

Empirical evidence says it's still the White Elephants that are making money -- by the pile -- in India.

Here's proof: Just 60 public sector undertakings, including 21 nationalised banks, accounted for more than half -- 50.33 per cent to be precise -- of the total cash profit generated by India Inc during 2002-03.

The private sector spawned the rest.

Cash profit is net profit plus depreciation or the pure cash gains made.

A study shows 1,797 companies (which generate over 95 per cent of the total profit of India Inc) earned an aggregate cash profit of Rs 1,00,785 crore (Rs 1,007.85 billion) during the trailing 12 months ended March 31, 2003, showing a growth of 32.24 per cent over Rs 76,215 crore (Rs 762.15 billion) in 2001-2002.

In absolute terms, the 60 PSUs generated a cash profit of Rs 50,724 crore (Rs 507.24 billion) in 2002-2003, compared with Rs 50,061 crore (Rs 500.61 billion) by the private sector.

This is a big turnaround from 2001-2002, when PSUs accounted for 45.60 per cent of the cash profit (Rs 34,753 crore), while the private sector accounted for 54.60 per cent (Rs 41,462 crore).

To put it in perspective: the cash profit generated by PSUs is more than the turnover of the private sector giant Reliance Industries (Rs 50,000 crore).

And it is about nine times the estimated cash profit of the Tata group in 2002-2003, 30 times the cash profit of the A V Birla Group and over 35 times that of Infosys Technologies, India biggest software company by net profit.

Reliance mobilised a cash profit of Rs 6,941 crore (Rs 69.41 billion), which is 6.89 per cent of the cash profit of the corporate sector and 13.87 per cent of the private sector's total cash profit.

Interestingly, the cash profit of Reliance is almost equal to that of the whole Tata group, over four times greater than that of the A V Birla group and Infosys Technologies, and five times Wipro's cash profit.

Reliance came second in terms of sales as well as market capitalisation last financial year.

In sales, Reliance is behind Indian Oil Corporation, while in market capitalisation terms it follows Oil and Natural Gas Corporation.

But Reliance is the only private company among the top five in sales terms. The others are all oil PSUs.

As per the net profit yardstick, the top three ranks are occupied by oil PSUs. ONGC ranked first with a net profit of Rs 10,529 crore (Rs 105.29 billion), while Indian Oil Corporation ranked second with a net profit of Rs 6,115 crore (Rs 61.15 billion). Reliance stood third, a notch ahead of the banking sector giant State Bank of India.

The private sector giant also stood third in terms of the cash profit ranking of the corporate sector, where ONGC leads with Rs 14,657 crore (Rs 146.57 billion) and IOC follows with Rs 7,777 crore (Rs 77.77 billion).

Reliance, with a cash profit of Rs 6,941 crore (Rs 69.41 billion), is followed by SBI (Rs 3,105 crore) and GAIL (Rs 2,249 crore).