CORPORATE CONUNDRUM

THE CENTRE SAYS THE ORDNANCE FACTORY BOARD’S 41 FACTORIES ARE DENS OF INEFFICIENCY AND NEED TO BE CORPORATISED. BUT THE REMEDY COULD PROVE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE

- SANDEEP UNNITHAN

SEEN PURELY THROUGH the lens of national security, the 80,000+ employees of the Ordnance Factory Board (OFB) couldn’t have chosen a worse time to announce a strike. The Indian Army, the OFB’s main customer, is currently deployed along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China. A strike means the army will have trouble getting urgently-needed equipment, like snow-proof tents, boots, high-altitude clothing and ammunition. This is the very reason the OFB’s 41 factories were set up over the past two centuries—to provide the force with urgently needed materiel in times of conflict, or in this case, a massive standoff with China that looks set to continue as the winter sets in.

The OFB’s unions have announced an indefinite strike beginning October 12 because the Centre is adamant about corporatising the 219-year-old organisation. On May 16, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced that the government would be doing so to improve the “autonomy, accountability and efficiency [of] ordnance suppliers”. The government plans to break up the monolithic OFB from a single department attached to the defence ministry into several corporations, like the nine existing defence public sector undertakings (DPSUs). On this, matters have proceeded at a breakneck pace over the past four months, with the government appointing a consulting agency, KPMG, to oversee the corporatisation. On September 11, it announced that an empowered group of ministers, headed by Union defence minister Rajnath Singh, would oversee the process. The buzz is that the government plans to announce a decision on the corporatisation before the end of the current financial year.