 A recent review meeting called by Nirmala Sita Raman with officials from various ministries revealed that the union government had raised over Rs 97,000 crore in the previous financial year. All this money has come by leasing out state-owned assets to global private entities. These assets include coal mines, power lines, parts of highways, even stadiums. Since the government introduced the National Monetisation Pipeline or the NMP last year, it had started leasing out national assets to private players with years-long contracts. This is the first time in India that public assets, such as these, are being handed over to foreign fund managers. Why should this worry us? Let's go to Thappan Singh, the General Secretary of the Centre for Indian Trade Unions for more clarity on the matter. Since the privatisation in a traditional way could not meet much of a success in 1991, because of various factors, and one of the factors definitely is the resistance by the working class and an atmosphere against the privatisation that has been created in the country, which is also having impact on the prospective bidders who are to participate in the privatisation process. All taken together, it did not meet much success. And that's why government is going ahead with another novel project being governed by their philosophy that public sector must not exist on the Indian economic soil. That is basic facility, their philosophy of their economic policy framework, and premised on that, they are going ahead. And this novel project has come about where the infrastructural asset in public sector in particular are being handed over to the private guys for operationalising and extracting revenue out of them with an appropriate mutually agreed revenue sharing basis. And this private sector now has got a further expansion involving the big global fund managers to participate in this entire process, and which in turn is a very alarming situation for the whole Indian economy and its future of its economy, because all these infrastructures are a kind of very essential indispensable service to be avered by other segments of Indian economy to sustain and carry on their activities. On the whole, the economy is going to have a very discouraging and very destructive effect out of going arising out of this national monetisation pipeline if it is translated into action. Some of these global private entities include the CPP Investment Board, the OTPP and the UEMT. One of these gigantic funds, the OTPP is a Canadian pension fund which manages over $200 billion in assets for its members. What are pension funds and how are they invested? Pension funds are massive pools of money that are collected from employees and employers contributions over the working life of employees. Pensions and other related benefits are paid out from these. These funds are invested in various ways in stock markets and in buying or leasing assets such as the ones being handed out in India right now. Can India benefit from this? Global funds are to multiply itself as effectively and they might have made this one of their choice which gives them a recurring multiplied return because these operators will also be allowed to increase the user charges without any regulations per se. So in that kind of a situation, this global fund is not going to expand that infrastructure. They are going to only operationalise that infrastructure to get a higher return out of their fund higher than whatever other usual investment mechanism can fetch to them. So if that be the purpose. So for this long term leasing operation through NMP, not neither the country is going to gain nor these infrastructural assets are going to rather gain in their value but rather they will be squeezed out their potential and by the end of the leasing period they may leave it like that which may not be serviceable at all. Not all is on the table. The Government of India has listed out all the public utility assets that it plans to lease out or has leased out already and at what value. Anyone can access the data on the official NMP portal. Let us remind you that the original NMP proposal had everything from roads to railways, ports to airports, telecom infrastructure to power lines and stadium to pipelines. Why is the Government doing this and how does this affect the Indian people? This is leasing out the property for monopoly right of operationalisation and drawing the revenue out of it. That is also a part of monopoly right for them for 30-35 years that the period of lease. So neither the assets will appreciate in value rather it will depreciate when turn and in any case this is that's why I must say that is privatisation plus rather a novel project replacing the traditional privatisation process by a project which seeks to hand over the assets virtually free to them in lieu of temporary return one time return right at this moment which is not based on any economic logic of economics it is a clear perverted political decision in favour of the big corporates both domestic and foreign which this Government has been serving as a loyal servant. All these assets were painstakingly built over the years they served the people and in doing so ensure the security and sovereignty of the country. Yet the Bharti Ajanta Party Government which spares no opportunity to preach nationalism and patriotism has started the process of selling public assets to foreigners. One must note that this act by the Government is part of a much larger agenda to sell off natural resources, public utility assets like industry units and even schools and hospitals. What will the nation look like after the BJP is through with these policies? Being owned or run by faceless corporations with many located in the west, is it for this that the Indian people voted Modi and his party into power twice?