BSNL, nearing the end of the story ..

Nearing the end of the story .

It was painful yesterday when I read in the newspapers that almost 78000 employees of BSNL across the country were retiring on 31st of January 2020 as part of a voluntary retirement scheme from Government of India to prune loss making public sector organisations from making further dents in the government coffers.

Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited which was once a mini-ratna of the Goverment of India in terms of it's resources and employee base over the years has grown to be a big loss making concern, lagging in technology upgrades and adoption na d failing to reach the scale of operations of private sector telecom firms.

The collapse of Department of Telecom (BSNL) is an interesting management case on how

1. excess bureaucratic controls

2. late adoption of cutting edge technology in telecommunications and

3. the burden of a large less productive and less efficient employee base (who enjoyed complete monopoly and thus engaged in deep, stinking corruption)

4. poor employee development initiatives

combinedly resulted in BSNL getting wiped out losing considerable customer base and public goodwill, unable to raise finances for technology adoption, facing stiff competition from private players in the country.

The employees were misled to believe that the Government would continue inject tax player's money to help sustain their inefficient and regressive non-customer centric policies .. 😳😳

Economic Times reports : Public sector carrier Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) is expected to post losses of over Rs 14,000 crore for the financial year 2018-19, while its revenue is slated to be around Rs 19,308 crore.Jul 3, 2019

How long can state use public tax payer's money to finance and support such
inefficient organizations ?? Though I feel pained at the predicament of the employees, I am sure they will be able to come out of this temporary setback and bounce through other private sector organisations to make a mark in the global  telecommunications field.

There cannot be an extended free lunch. Some day it has to stop ..

George