India or Bharat? Check out the Central government's PSU list for answers

If you go by the country’s list of central public sector undertakings, governments have been traditionally comfortable with both names. Image: Indian Oil image: Getty Images; Bharat Petroleum: Reuters

Article 1 of the Constitution of India is emphatic that “India, that is Bharat, shall be a Union of States.” It is thus implicit that both ‘India’ and Bharat’ are the country’s official names. Any change will call for an amendment of Article 1.  

Meanwhile, if you go by the country’s list of central public sector undertakings, governments have been traditionally comfortable with both names. As per the finance ministry’s department of public enterprises list of CPSEs (as of February 2020), there are close to 180 CPSEs across four schedules. The four schedules (A, B, C, D) are based on quantitative factors like sales, profits, investment, number of employees and qualitative factors like national and strategic importance and level of  technology and complexity. 

In Schedule A, which comprises of 66 CPSEs (we will have to exclude Air India, which has been privatised), roughly a third of the 66 has India in their names Prominent CPSEs with India in the name include Airports Authority of India, Coal India, Container Corp of India, Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India, Electronics Corporation of India, Engineers India, Food Corporation of India and Indian Oil Corporation, Oil India and Steel Authority of India, among others.

The Bharat brigade in Schedule A includes BEML (formerly Bharat Earth Movers Ltd), Bharat Electronics, Bharat Heavy Electricals, Bharat Petroleum and Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. Schedule B has companies like Bharat Coking Coal, Bharat Dynamics, Bharat Petro Resources and Bharat Pumps and Compressors,  

There is of course a third subset with the ‘Hindustan’ prefix: Hindustan Aeronautics, Hindustan Copper, Hindustan Paper Corporation and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation. But that’s another debate, for another day.