In one of the most landmark judgments of this decade Supreme Court of India, in the month of August, cancelled arbitrary allotment of coal blocks. The court held that it’s a national asset and should be auctioned off at the best possible price. This lead to a huge set back as it was a retrospective order and changed the way Indian Government could function.
While the idea of auctioning is a good one and will help to add to the national treasury and make our country richer, my question is that why auctioning should be limited to coal blocks? There are so many other items that can also be auctioned in the same manner. These are the following areas that are also using national assets / resources either directly or indirectly and they can also be auctioned.
Here is a partial list:
1. Railway tickets – The entire system of allocating the tickets of the world’s largest railway network can be auctioned. People need to pay more for preferred seats and facilities.
2. Air India tickets – The national carrier does have offers and facilities but they can be added to and more money can be charged from those who are willing to pay more if they get more. This will help to improve the entire infrastructure of the company.
3. Puja at temples – A religious country like India where people spend hours waiting in a queue for performing puja, needs auctioning of special darshan, no queue privilege, special Prasad and so on. Even this extra money will help to clean the places of worship.
4. Room bookings at govt hotels – Some rooms can be kept reserved for last minute bookings or privileged booking and with the extra income the government can maintain their guest houses better.
5. Parking spots in cities – Now people pay almost the same parking fees whether they park in prime areas of the city or in the suburbs. Increasing the parking fees in prime areas and allotting them on on realtime basis wherein one pays by the hour and can even book a parking slot online, will definitely do two things – increase government’s income plus reduce the number of vehicles in the congestion areas.
6. Advertisement space in airports / trains / buses / bus stops etc. can be auctioned too and can have varying prices.
7. Public sector services like banks can have auctions of real estate or vehicle when purchasers default payment. Auction of the seized properties does happen even now but it is pretty much behind closed doors.
8. Power to industrial units – The idea is the more the profit the more should be the payment
9. Govt run eating joints – While leasing out to interested parties, auctioning can be done.
10. Vehicle license plates with fancy numbers and even the non-fancy ones can be 00% auctioned.
11. Appointments with govt officers – The usual trend of waiting outside government offices can be broken by auctioning visiting slots.
12. College/ school seats – Even educational institutions can have an auction of their seats, even if on a limited basis to begin with. This is different from donation or capitation. The person paying more gets the seat. Simple logic!
13. Telephone number in BSNL / MTNL – Auctioning of telephone numbers of landlines can also be held.
14. Govt real estate – The government owns real estate in prime areas of the cities which they can auction and sell at higher prices.
When people pay more for facilities, the quality of the system can improve too. Reasonable enough to expect people to pay more only when more is being offered.
All the excess money earned by that particular department should not go to the “treasury” but should be used to upgrade the facilties, give staff bonus and part of it should be held as reserves for future use. They can begin with a reserve price and then the excess may go to such kind of “extra profit fund”. This way there would be a competition amongst departments on who gets more money…