A key omission in this year’s vote-on-account presented by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was disinvestment. Not since Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha formally included it in his aborted Budget for 1990-91 has disinvestment not figured in the annual presentation.
Is this then a paradigm shift? Is the government revisiting its disinvestment policy, which includes the strategic sale of equity and privatisation — like it managed with Air India.
To answer all this and more, Anil Padmanabhan spoke to Tuhin Kanta Pandey, Secretary, Department of Investment and Public Management (DIPAM), the point person spearheading this strategic pivot.
Anil Padmanabhan has been a journalist for the last 36 years. He has worked in various capacities in several publications including Afternoon Despatch & Courier, Press Trust of India, Business Standard, Mint and was based in New York for India Today. He was a Nieman Fellow in 2001. He tweets at @capitalcalculus.
