Has disinvestment lost priority or got held up?

The government's programme to offload equity stakes and other assets has shown paltry progress. We await clarity on why so little emphasis is placed on this deficit-bridging path

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India’s market-embracing effort to disinvest in non-strategic sectors of the economy seems to have dropped down the government’s list of policy priorities. It has only raised ₹12,504 crore by way of stake sales so far in 2023-24, as against the budgeted ₹51,000 crore. With just two months to go, bridging that gap would be a tall order. Notably, this year isn’t an exception, with data pointing to a steady slide in disinvestment aims. After climbing at first under the Narendra Modi government until 2020-21, the targets set for offloading stakes dropped for three years in a row—a trend marker. And barring 2017-18 and 2018-19, in all years, actual mop-ups from stake sales fell short of their budget estimates by large margins. This is at odds with the stance of the government having ‘no business doing business,’ as Prime Minister Modi has often stated. “Its job is to think about food for the poor, make houses and toilets for them, get them clean drinking water, make health facilities available to them, make roads… to think about the small farmers," Modi said in 2