Congress must find a better way of being in Opposition

No more disruption

Business Standard

Apropos the report, "Mamata launches 2016 poll campaign" (July 21). Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee launched her 2016 Assembly poll campaign by predicting victory for her party and promising supporters a bigger rally next year. Calling the three Opposition parties in the state - the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) - "ha-ja-ba-ra-la", a Bengali phrase meaning 'in a state of disarray' that appears in the book of nonsense verse by Sukumar Roy, Banerjee indicated they would be no match for her party in the polls.BJP President Amit Shah seems to have given the Assembly polls a walkover by directing the party's state unit to focus on the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. This indicates an underlying bonhomie between the BJP and TMC. The BJP has been unable to pass important bills in the Upper House and the TMC has been embarrassed by the ongoing Central Bureau of Investigation investigation into the

Letters: New bonhomie

Apropos Ajai Shukla's column "The ghost of Gorshkov" (July 21). The columnist's suggestion of going for indigenous production of frigates is welcome. But the suggestion of scrapping the deal with Russia over frivolous reasons is unacceptable. Shukla says the engines for the Russian-made frigates are from Ukraine and may not be delivered to India as Ukraine refuses to sell it to Russia. It is unlikely that Russia will deliver only the hulls - and not the engines - as its domestic manufacturers have already started supplying engines to frigates for the country's navy. In continuation of this issue, the Project 17-A frigate's engine is not indigenous and is supplied by General Electric, the company that refused to transfer technology in the crucial stage of the light combat aircraft project, delaying it perpetually. It is high time the Indian defence establishment strengthened its ties with Russia and thwarted China's new-found equation with that country.M Natarajan  ChennaiLetters can be

Letters: Don't scrap the deal

Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) leader M Karunanidhi's statement that his party will strive for prohibition of liquor in Tamil Nadu if voted to power exposes the brand of politics that people's representatives play on the gullible masses. It's a sad commentary on the state of the Indian polity that thrives on tall  promises without dwelling on the complexities involved in fulfilling them. After keeping silent all these years - the DMK, in fact, lifted liquor prohibition in the state in 1971 - the party is now fanning the issue after taking a cue from other parties. This appears to be an attempt to draw political capital by flogging a dead horse. The DMK seems to be running out of substantial issues to challenge the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government in the state.R Prabhu Raj   BengaluruLetters 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 mu

Letters: Changing stance

Sanjiv Mehta

Volume growth will be our key focus: Sanjiv Mehta

Transparent regulation and global standards are key

Fixing food regulation

Perhaps with an eye on the coming Assembly elections, the West Bengal government has filed a review petition with the Supreme Court regarding its May 13 judgment that bars chief ministers' photographs from being used in government advertisements in the mass media. The apex court had said that photos of the President, the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice of India (besides those of national figures such as Mahatma Gandhi) alone could be used in ads sponsored by the government. Apparently, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is picky about her pictures and her secretary had issued an order sometime ago demanding that all departments take permission before using her images. All that work would be wasted if the apex court persists with its no-photo ruling.

Image conscious

Tota Singh, minister for NRI affairs in the Punjab government, and his delegation came under attack in New York recently when protesters threw stones and hurled a shoe at them. Shoe-hurling at politicians goes back a long way. It grabbed international attention when in 2008, journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw his shoes at then US President George W Bush during a 2008 press conference in Iraq. Closer home, in 2009,  a shoe lobbed by Jarnail Singh, a journalist, missed India's then Home Minister P Chidambaram by a fair margin. The same year, Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani received a similar treatment from party member Pawas Agarwal. In 2012, a shoe was thrown at Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi during an election rally in Dehradun. In January this year, former chief minister of Bihar Jitan Ram Manjhi avoided a shoe hurled at him during a janata durbar.

Another shoe attack

Nitin Gadkari, Minister of Road Transport and Highways, reminded Anand Kumar, managing director, National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd (NHIDCL), of a lesson in algebra while elaborating on the secret of nimble workplaces. Speaking at a function to mark NHIDCL's first anniversary, Gadkari said as the workload multiplied with time, Kumar might be tempted to go on a hiring spree. He would be better off if he encouraged teamwork and an equitable distribution of work. "So, you have team A and team B," said Gadkari, "Don't do A squared plus B squared. Take A and B as a team and do A plus B whole squared. The result will always be bigger."

A lesson in algebra

With reference to your editorial, "The basic principles" (July 21), as an active internet user, I am shocked to learn about the recent proposal to create differential access to cybserspace. While I appreciate the government's Digital India campaign and realise it is important the rural community gets access to the internet (www.internet.org), I fail to understand the logic of discriminating among websites to achieve this social cause.At present, 42 per cent of the global population has access to the internet and it is estimated due to growing internet use on cell phones this figure will cross 50 per cent by 2016. Net neutrality is crucial for small businesses, especially start-ups that bank on an open internet to launch their operations, create a market, advertise their products/services and distribute using e-commerce sites.The internet in India is neither dying nor does it need to be saved. It should evolve in an innovative way for more people to be able to access it in a manner they

Letters: Free the internet

The Centre, it appears, would be asking the states to enact their own laws on land acquisition. It is surprising that it took six decades after Independence for the Centre to take a relook at a 100-year-old legislation. Having done so in 2007 we have continued to soft-pedal on this even as the Five-Year Plans promising big-bang industrialisation kept rolling in. Now that serious attention is being paid by the Centre, the lack of will in pursuing the rough road to a comprehensive legislation is unfortunate. The coming Bihar Assembly elections have managed to undo the toil of eight years. For an election-eve image upgrade, the Bharatiya Janata Party has offered what must be a national overview policy formulation to the states. If the bill is back in the earlier form, it would have all the drawbacks that prompted debates in the first place.R Narayanan GhaziabadLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002Fa

Letters: Better late than never

The editorial, "A sick system" (July 21) rightly insists on an expansion of the public health care system. Over the last two decades we have criticised the issue of government presence in health care. The poor quality of government-run health care outfits has been used as an excuse to allow unbridled growth of private heath care services. The private health care system is aimed at the rich. While the government-run health care services have been abused to allow the entry of the private sector, few have spared a thought for the poor. The cost of treatment has become prohibitive.We don't seem to understand that taking care of the health of the people is the best investment for a country. Whatever be the policy of the government or the model it adopts, it has to be in the direction of providing better health care to its citizens, especially maternal health and the health of small children.The next thing India should concentrate on is eradicating communicable diseases. India's biggest achi

Letters: Healthy, wealthy & wise

DoT paper makes a start on net neutrality

The basic principles

No alternative to beefing up public healthcare

A sick system

Gujarat was the first Indian state to implement prohibition on alcohol in 1958 but of late, there has been growing demand for relaxation on this front. Those opposing prohibition say relaxation would boost tourism and business at the state's special economic zones (Gujarat has the distinction of being the first state to enact the Special Economic Zone Act, 2004). Rubbishing that view, a government official said: "Prohibition is our uniqueness. There is no need to do away with it to boost tourist flow; rather, tourists across the globe could come here and see the current crop of people in Gujarat. How people live in prohibition can be our brand equity."

Prohibition as brand equity

Ghar wapsi and reverse ghar wapsi have become so commonplace in Indian politics that these have stopped resulting in raised eyebrows. Still, rumour mills were set on fire over the weekend when Sitaram Yechury, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), dropped by at expelled leader Somnath Chatterjee's Bolpur home, for lunch, seven years after the veteran earned former general secretary Prakash Karat's wrath and was expelled from the party. Yechury had taken over from Karat three months ago. After lunch, he described Chatterjee as an "asset to the party", though he did not say if Chatterjee would be re-inducted.

A comeback for Somnath?

You don't need a reason to start a war on micro-blogging website Twitter. After former editor of The Indian Express, Shekhar Gupta, attacked the makers of Bahubali over the portrayal of tribals in the movie - "Most awful film portrayal of tribals in #Bahubali. Dark, scar-faced, ugly rapist brutes with rotting black teeth. Shameful profiling," posted @ShekharGupta - @ShootinThoughts lamented, "What a shame @ShekharGupta ji! Dark, scar faced was the portrayal. But "ugly" is your interpretation. Very Racist!" @DrJwalaG retorted: "Presstitutes have started targeting movies now. Done with Namo and his followers?"

Start a war in 140 characters

This refers to T N Ninan's article "Banking on non-solutions" (July 18). There's no doubt that stifling debt loads continue to weigh on government and central banks around the world. In India, even though private banks are in much better shape, the asset quality of some of the government-run banks causes concern.According to a statement by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, public sector banks would require about Rs 2.4 lakh crore capital by 2018 to meet global Basel III capital adequacy norms. Even though most of them are adequately capitalised at present, considering their increasing non-performing assets and future growth, they will need additional funding to lend more. The government has two options - either raise funds from the markets by diluting government holding or infuse capital by using taxpayers' money. But looking at the current market price, most of these banks are trading at huge discounts to their book value, and any stake sale at this level would be at a distressed valuati

Letters: Better valuation

This refers to the report, "Modi targets Congress, takes dig at dynastic politics" (July 18). The recent war of words between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi gives a foretaste of what is to come in the monsoon session of Parliament.  It looks set to be disrupted on a range of issues - from the Lalit Modi row to the Vyapam scam and the land acquisition bill to labour reforms. Modi and Gandhi are leaders good at wrestling with words. The Gandhi scion seems to have won this round with his remark in the context of the land acquisition bill that people will reduce Modi's "56-inch chest" to "5.6 inches" in six months. He added that his party would not allow an inch of land belonging to farmers to be acquired by big businesses  without their consent. The Bharatiya Janata Party's repartee that Gandhi was a baby in "diapers" seemed less effective. The witticisms exchanged between the two leaders might not be products of their imagination; they seem to be th

Letters: War of words

With reference to the report, "River interlinking questions" (July 19), water has a unique status among all the elements in the environment. The development of water as a resource has thus become essential if the demands of a growing population are to be met. The availability of water in India was 5,177 cubic metres per capita in 1950, which has reduced to 1,450 cubic metres in 2015 and would further drop to 1,340 cubic metres in 2025. This decline can be met only by interlinking the rivers by constructing dams and diverting water to places where there is a requirement. While selecting projects there should be little damage done to the environment and resettlement measures should be taken up. This should be included in the overall project cost. This way we can face the challenges of water shortage and sustainable development by keeping the parochial outlook of certain sections in check.Sushil Bakliwal  JaipurLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru

Letters: Water woes

Nearly 60% MSMEs did not have a web presence

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