A few weeks after Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram announced the divestment of the government's 10 per cent stake in the Tamil Nadu-based Neyveli Lignite Corporation, the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham led by M Karunanidhi threatened to pull out of the UPA government at the Centre.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh immediately announced that divestment plans as a whole will be kept on hold.
Is the DMK against divestment? Why did the party not want the divestment of NLC to go ahead? What exactly happened after the finance minister announced his divestment plans?
T K S Elangovan, the DMK's organising secretary, explains all this and much more in an interview with Contributing Editor Shobha Warrier.
Why is the DMK against the divestment of Neyveli Lignite Corporation?
Even when Murasoli Maran was the Union minister for industries, he had said that profit-making PSUs (public sector units) should not be divested. So, we cannot accept the divestment of a profit-making PSU (like NLC). This was incorporated in the Common Minimum Programme also. So, our party is against the divestment of any profit-making PSU.
When the news of the divestment of NLC was first announced by the finance minister, the DMK did not raise its voice. Why later?
We are not like the Left. We are in the government, and when a decision (to divest NLC) was taken by the Cabinet, it was binding on us. We cannot escape the decision even though we were not present in the meeting.
So, our leader (Tamil Nadu chief minister and DMK supremo M Karunanidhi) suggested a 'via media' decision that the shares may be sold to the employees themselves so that they also become the owners of the company. When our leader wrote this to the prime minister, he said that priority will be given to the employees and we thought they will be happy.
But the employees were far from happy. That was because the amount of divestment, Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) is a whole lot more than their purchasing capacity.
The major trade union at NLC is backed by the DMK, but they did not listen to the party's suggestion.. .
See, sometimes we have to listen to the trade unions. We are politicians and trade unions are representatives of workers. We have to respect their feelings. As they were not willing to agree to the solution suggested by the chief minister, they went ahead on with the strike.
Did the decision of the trade union backed by the DMK come as a shock to the party?
No, no. There was no directive by the party to the trade union not to participate in the strike. We suggested an idea which was unacceptable to them. So we decided to change our stand. Actually, we decided to stick to our original stand. What we had suggested was a deviation from our original stand. Our stand has always been that the profit-making PSUs should not be divested.
But when the Cabinet had decided to divest and we are also a party in the government, we had to go by it. So we had suggested an alternative.
Was it because the AIADMK (All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham) made a lot of noise that the DMK decided to take the tough stand of coming out of the government?
No. We did not want to be a party to this decision. When we are against the decision, and our trade union is going ahead with the strike, what is the use in us continuing in the Cabinet?
Did your party have any talks with the finance minister earlier?
Those talks were going on. Immediately after the announcement, our leader talked to the finance minister. He then gave certain explanations. See, we are not against the government; we are a part of it. In the present economic scenario, even if the government takes certain decisions which are against our policies,
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