MLAs are convinced self-help is the best way to go

The pension gold mine

Business Standard

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The Justice Ashok Mathur-headed panel went to various parts of the country - from Shillong to Mumbai to Port Blair

Sailing seven seas

Chairman of the Seventh Pay Commission  A K Mathur (right) submitted the 900-page report to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, in New Delhi on Thursday

Recommended date of implementation is January 1, 2016

7th Pay panel report at a glance

Investment in exploration may finally take off

New energy regime

People travelling to Patna this week are finding it difficult to find accommodation in hotels, as the district administration has booked a large number of rooms for delegates attending Nitish Kumar's swearing-in ceremony as chief minister of Bihar at Patna's Gandhi Maidan today. Kumar's guests are being put up in five-star hotels Maurya and Chanakya; Union ministers and chief ministers of other states, along with senior bureaucrats, will stay at the state guest house; and the security personnel accompanying them are at the circuit house. Members of the Legislative Assembly, who don't have any other accommodation in the city, have been put up in Tier-II hotels. A busy weekend ahead for the city's hospitality sector.

Booked to capacity

While journalists battle informal gag orders on the release of information by some ministries, there is at least one Union minister who believes that the current crop of bureaucrats is more vocal than some of the ministers. Speaking at a media interaction, this key Union minister faced a volley of questions about the perceived "communication gap" in the National Democratic Alliance government. "There is no such thing," he retorted, adding the government was fortunate to have "cordial" and "media-friendly" bureaucrats. "Some of them speak more than I do with the press," the minister claimed.

Talking point

The Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2015 is not a word; for the first time ever, it is a pictograph - officially called the 'Face with Tears of Joy' emoji. According to Oxford Dictionaries, there were other strong contenders from a range of fields, such as ad blocker, Brexit dark web and sharing economy, but the popular emoji was chosen as the 'word' that best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015.

Word of the year

With reference to Rahul Jacob's interview with Manish Sabharwal in 'Lunch with BS' (November 14), Sabharwal gives several good suggestions, but the one regarding the Pay Commission for civil servants to link salaries with performance is vague.Sabharwal's suggestion is not a new one - the Sixth Pay Commission had made a similar one. It had proposed to give 10 to 15 per cent of employees an additional three per cent pay. A team, which included an IIM professor, was asked to identify the parameters on which this three per cent additional pay should be based. All government departments were asked to rate the performance of an employee but they failed.The problem of identifying the targets scientifically cannot be minimised.  If, for example, in a tax department, the criteria consist of the number of assessments, seizures and anti-evasion activity, all such numbers can be manipulated. And all departments do not have the same type of jurisdiction. The present system of an annual confidential

Letters: Measuring performance

With reference to the well-timed editorial, "Reorganise, don't reshuffle" (November 18), there cannot be two opinions about the possible reasons for the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's likely move to reshuffle his cabinet. The most important reason could be to penalise non-performers and inject some young blood into the cabinet. However, it would be naive to think that the cabinet does not have good performers. Of course, a few ministers have been indifferent performers, more interested in raking up controversies than in doing their job.I fully endorse the editorial's view that if and when the PM decides to restructure his cabinet, he has to take into account its implications for the structural reform programme. Further, the matter of realignment of ministries into clusters of interrelated domains remains shrouded in mystery.One expects the PM will ensure that only people of impeccable reputation and who are experts in their fields are inducted into his cabinet. Of course, the political

Letters: Cabinet arithmetic

Apropos the editorial, "Terror in Paris" (November 16), the series of meticulously planned attacks on the French capital has shocked the world. It is a murderous assault on humanity. The terrorists are trying to destabilise the world by targeting vital economic and political installations. While it is time to stand in solidarity with Paris and grieve for those who lost their lives in the attacks, it is also time to have a relook at current security set-ups and beef them up to avert a repeat of such attacks elsewhere. A global fight against terror is the need of the hour. Terrorism is a curse that is assuming dangerous proportions to wreck society and therefore, should be dealt with an iron hand.Srinivasan Umashankar   NagpurLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002Fax: (011) 23720201E-mail: letters@bsmail.inAll letters must have a postal address and telephone number

Letters: Terrorism a curse

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have become the most vociferous critics of the party leadership. 'Arrogansee' and 'proudyness' are among the ills that plague the team led by BJP President Amit Shah, they say. The two words may not find a place in an English dictionary, but they are common parlance in the Hindi heartland. BJP leaders from Bihar are particularly overjoyed that two state leaders, Nitish Kumar of the Janata Dal (United) and Lalu Prasad of the Rashtriya Janata Dal, showed BJP bosses that "strategy and resources might win elections elsewhere in the country but not in Bihar". BJP leaders from Uttar Pradesh, several of whom felt ignored by Shah and his team, believe the party will get another jolt in the state Assembly polls in 2017 if the current 'arrogansee' of the party leadership persists.

'Arrogansee' and 'proudyness'

The cities of Mainpuri, Etawah, Firozabad and Agra in Uttar Pradesh are being decked up to celebrate the 76th birthday of Samajwadi Party founder and national president Mulayam Singh Yadav (pictured) on November 22. A birthday-eve bash at Saifai's athletic stadium on November 21 is expected to draw more than 50,000 supporters of the politician as well as envoys from 10 countries, film stars and industrialists. Government-owned accommodation and major hotels in these cities have been booked for the VIP guests. While the Uttar Pradesh Rajkiya Nirman Nigam, a state government undertaking, will host the planned shows, Singh's son and state Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav is supervising the preparations.

Birthday bash

Pros and cons of China's yuan becoming a reserve currency

New status for renminbi

The #PrayForParis tribute to the victims of the November 13 terror attacks in the French capital took a bizarre turn when a section of Twitterati started sending its good wishes to another Paris, socialite Paris Hilton. @ThisisAshwill tweeted, "I hope Paris Hilton gets better", while another apparent Hilton fan, @xSkyline posted, "My heart goes out to Paris Hilton and her family". Other Twitter users were quick to point out the gaffe.

Pray for 'Paris' Hilton

T N Ninan's observations in the column, "The tax puzzle" (November 13) are interesting and call for an explanation. Normally, an increase in excise duty collection is indicative of higher manufacturing activity, which, as the author points out, is not the case in the current financial year. During the period April-October 2015, the excise duty collected was Rs 1,48,000 crore - a rise of 68 per cent from Rs 88,000 crore during the same period the previous year.The main reason for the increased excise duty collection was the rise in the excise duty on petrol and diesel by Rs 7.75 and Rs 6.50 per litre respectively that came into effect between November 2014 and January 2015 in four tranches. The full impact of this was reflected in the April-October 2015 period. In an attempt to partly mop up the windfall arising from falling crude oil prices, the excise duty has been further increased by Rs 1.60 per litre on petrol and Rs 0.40 per litre on diesel with effect from November 1, 2015.Althou

Letters: Interesting observations

The letter to the editor, "Localise CSR" (November 17) commenting on Subir Gokarn's column, "Leveraging the CSR mandate" (November 16), gives a macro view of one of the possible ways to efficiently and effectively manage scarce resources in today's fast-changing uncertain times.Three points should be kept in mind to understand the column. First, the primordial objective of all business activities is to maximise profits for shareholders; the interests of other stakeholders come later. Second, a two per cent post-tax profit in itself is a back-door tax as rightly pointed out in the column. Third, it is a fact widely known that the business community is treated as a milch cow.It is essential to bring in transparency in the purpose and scope of corporate social responsibility. Responsibilities should be spelt out and future resource flow determined. While industry has to foot the CSR bill, there should be adequate government machinery for implementation, authentication, validation and cert

Letters: Priorities in CSR

It is a welcome development that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is keen to find the reasons for its loss in the Bihar Assembly elections. Introspection is necessary after defeat; it is desirable in victory too. In defeat, introspection enables one to understand the factors that led to reverses and accordingly rework the strategy; in victory, it allows one to probe the extent of the margin gained or lost over previous instances to ascertain one's strengths and weaknesses.Nowadays, a political party cannot take the electorate for granted; it is also difficult to predict who they would vote for. After the Assembly election defeats in Delhi and Bihar, introspection will hopefully help the BJP curb loss of credibility. The BJP needs to get its act together also because it has to get bills passed in the Rajya Sabha.Srinivasan Umashankar   NagpurLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002Fax: (011) 23720201

Letters: A welcome step

India must brace for more cloudbursts that stress its cities

Chennai's floods

I have given states an offer they can't refuse: Piyush Goyal

Piyush Goyal

Intrview with Union minister of state for coal, power and renewable energy

Pulses check WPI's negative spiral

The fall in Wholesale Price Index (WPI) based inflation was less steep in October, at -3.8 per cent compared with 4.5 per cent in September, as a sharp rise in pulses inflation pushed food inflation (primary + manufactured) up. But, weakness in global crude oil and commodity prices kept overall headline inflation in negative territory. Domestic demand, too, continued to remain slack, keeping manufactured products' inflation as well as core inflation in negative territory. Core inflation, as measured by the CRISIL Core Inflation Indicator (CCII), stood at -0.4 per cent, better than the -0.7 per cent recorded last month.Food inflation (primary food articles + manufactured food products) rose to 1.7 per cent in October, compared with 0.2 per cent last month. The increase was mainly due to pulses (weight of 0.7 per cent in WPI), which saw inflation spike 53 per cent in October, the highest in a decade, up from 38.6 per cent in September.The highest inflation rate among pulses articles was

Realign ministries into clusters of interrelated domains

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