Cut to the initial days of the UPA trying to secure its reins to power. It out-shouted the NDA’s claim of improving the nation’s economy on the liberalization plank. The Congress party claimed the credit saying it initiated liberalization to start with. Fair enough. Again, to its credit, Manmohan Singh and Chidambaram have done pretty well, kept up the pace of growth on the same plank, the stock market is exploding by the day, investments are pouring in and all is well in the country.

But.

There’s an uglier side to it, too. The days of honeymooning with failed policies aka Nehruvian policies are far from over. If anything, they and their proponents–mainly in the Left but some Congressmen as well–stand as obstacles to allow the economy to more fully bloom. The number of strikes the country has witnessed over 2 years is unprecedented. From banks to airlines to buses–the onging BEST(!) strike–these acts of organized hooliganism have cost a fortune to the nation. These holdovers from the earlier “socialist” era now stand threatened–both inside the government as well as elsewhere; they’re horrified at the prospect of having to actually work to earn. A free market thrives only on efficiency, tardiness is immediately and harshly punished. However, it is a sad commentary that the government has shown itself to buckle under union thuggery–recall the government’s shameful give-in to the SBI’s blackmail.

There are however, other methods to stifle the economy: passing legislations is by far the easiest. Take the latest: You’ve got only snail mail.

The next time you need to send an urgent letter, you may have to depend on snail mail. The government today proposed amendments to the Indian Post Office Act, 1898, banning private courier companies from carrying letters weighing less than 300 gm. The private courier industry is livid, but the government’s defence is that it needs this monopoly to be able to fund cheap postal services in remote areas.

The government’s sorry excuse is stuff for a political satire if only it didn’t carry such dangerous portents. I doubt if the government is naive enough not to recognize the reason for people opting for private courier companies. The postal department despite being rudely woken up from its slothful slumber has achieved next to nothing: a “speed post” costs a bomb but takes the same if not longer, time to reach–if it reaches at all–than “ordinary” post. And despite offering an array of “corporate,” “lightning” and other packages, businesses and individuals still prefer private courier services. Now, that should be corrected, not a mere piece of paper.

By trying to forcibly re-induce monopoly into one of the more profitable business sector, this piece of legislation will guarantee to wipe out the courier business and along with it, the jobs of thousands of people. What we’ll witness is the old days of inordinate postal delays, the long queues at post offices to buy an Inland Letter Card, and the same arrogant attitudes of the postal staff.

Related Reading: A monopoly reappears | Courier services | That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen |

Cross-posted on Desicritics