Public-Private Partnership in Information Dissemination

Public-private partnerships are being extended to many areas these days. It now covers dissemination of reports published by the central government. Earlier, reports of the government and of official committees would be available – admittedly in small numbers – from the outlets of the controller of publications at a modest price. If there was additional demand, as for the Economic Survey, the more enterprising small publishers would quickly reproduce these reports for sale. This was after all public information.

The new trend is that initially a very small number of copies is printed by the government for distribution in Parliament and to the media. Everyone else is expected to download the reports from the internet – or wait for their publication by large publishing houses who set their own prices, at very high rates of course! The government contracts a publishing house of its choice to print, price and sell the reports. For example, the three-volume Eleventh Five-Year Plan was distributed in such a fashion, so too the reports of the Committee on Financial Sector Assessment. Soon perhaps publication rights to even the Union Budget and the Economic Survey will be sold to private publishers.