Comments by "M Shastri" (@libshastra) on "Should India's biggest companies be broken up?" video.

The only Indian companies that need to be broken up are the ones owned by the Govt. Indian Railways desperately needs to be broken up - it is the one monopoly that's genuinely holding back progress. Inefficiencies and the monopoly of the Railways adds to logistic costs rather than reduce them. It demands a price rather than discover a price. CONCOR is a similar company that needs to be broken up. There are so many Govt companies and monopolies that need to be broken up, why is Viral Acharya distracting us by talking about breaking up private players? The question that private players should be broken up is very very very misplaced. Viral Acharya has gone absolutely nuts.
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Our stupid AGR policy forced market consolidation. TRAI saddled everyone with insane amounts of debt thanks to it's policy to include non telcom activities as part of it's AGRs. It was so stupid that TRAI was including Delhi Metro's ticket sales as part of it's AGRs - yes Delhi Metro uses spectrum to run it's CBTC signalling system. Stupid policy that got introduced by UPA.
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We already have plenty of Govt monopolies.
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@divyanshverma2296 Boeing is not a monopoly, it is a dominant player in one segment of the aircraft manufacturing (and for good reason, the capital and R&D costs are huge. One 787 development program takes about 12-15 Billion dollars).
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@jaiminbajaj if you watch the video, those 5 companies don't command the market price like PSUs do. I disagree, the notion that 5 companies are dominant enough in our market at this juncture is absolutely nuts. The rise in Steel prices is very cyclic and companies can do little about it, it takes several years and quite a lot of capital to expand steel production. Besides Govt has it's PSU options to buy cheap steel from and the govt does it all the time. Govt actually cuts private players out of it's procurement quite often - MAHSR steel doesn't come from a private player - it comes from SAIL through an MoU (There was no bid). Cement I concede but that is a one sector where CCI is already investigating and taking action on.
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Econometrics hasn't reached that level of statistical maturity you are talking about. Not yet.
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@rayrikr you hit the nail. Drawing meaningful conclusions is still an art and that's why econometrics still lacks maturity. This is a difficult problem to solve but that area of study is getting a lot of focus. At the moment, econometrics treats data as evidence, it need to treat data as hypothesis and then transition into hypothesis testing. Abhijeet Banarjee et al provides a framework for hypothesis testing. It is still relatively new, but I think it will make economics more a science and less social science.
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