Omission of BSNL CMD

Last week, the PM, with a lot of fanfare and chest beating rhetoric, put forth the Digital India plan. But this event was grossly unfair with state owned BSNL, which has been a huge contributor to this event. Sharing the dais with the PM were some of the top industrialists from the private sector but the CMD of BSNL who rightfully deserved to be there with the PM, was not given any place on the stage. The entire BNL team was just a mute spectator.

The employees of BSNL are pretty miffed with this treatment meted out to their CMD and have written a strong letter to the PM. They have questioned the objective behind this action. In the letter, the employees have said, “while the stage was replete with private industrialists, many of whom had no … connection with the event itself, the CMD of BSNL had been relegated to the rows much farther back, well out of the purview of any media and public attention whatsoever.” They go on to write, “This action of the organisers of the event, Department of IT, even after knowing about the intrinsic value that was added to the Digital India week by BSNL’s priceless efforts, is emblematic of the growing government apathy towards public sector institutions.”

Agreed. This is one omission which reeks pretty poorly about the culture of pandering to only the private sector. And is also shows how every department and organization of the Govt functions like an independent island – no one knows what the other is doing. Thus the IT department would have had no inkling about the contribution of MTNL and BSNL when they got into organizing the show. Its better to think that this was a slip and not a deliberate attempt to sideline BSNL. But such slips, especially under the very nose of Modi, reeks of major inefficiencies and lapses.