With Assembly polls in Bihar quite near, ministers from the state are devoting more time to canvassing than to their ministries. Ministers like Ram Vilas Paswan, Radha Mohan Singh, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Upendra Kushwaha, Rajiv Pratap Rudy, Giriraj Singh and Ram Kirpal Yadav are not only helping shape the 'Bihar package' that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to announce at his rally in Muzaffarpur on July 25, but also travelling to Bihar more often. Jammu and Kashmir, which was awaiting a special package, has suffered. The Centre is treating it just like any other state, lest the alliance's rivals such as Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad allege that Bihar is being ignored by the Modi government.

Bihar gets pampered, for now

Business Standard

Europe's strugglers, IMF's darlingsHow many times its IMF quota did each country receive from the IMF in its bailout?

The big fat Greek bailout

Let states pass their own land acquisition laws

This land is your land

Government should reconsider stand on defamation

A retrograde step

Infosys co-founder N R Narayana Murthy has found himself in the midst of a social media storm after he said on Wednesday that in the past 60 years India had not produced a single "earth-shaking" invention that became a global household name. While some Twitter posts took potshots at Infosys and Murthy - @thekaipullai, for instance, said, "The business he started is one of the main reasons why innovation isn't happening" - a majority of them were downright funny. @lindsaypereira posted, "We invented an imaginary Gujarat model and many fake leaders," and @deepakmohoni cited "Old Monk, Gobi Manchurian, IPL, The Missed Call" among the Indian 'inventions' of the last 60 years that "Mr Narayana Murthy forgot".

The 'inventions' Murthy forgot

The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) continue to spar. During a public meeting at Alandur in Chennai on July 7, DMK chief M Karunanidhi suggested that Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and AIADMK supremo, J Jayalalithaa, take "rest as she is unwell". Earlier this week, AIADMK held a meeting at the same venue and advised Karunanidhi to stop raking up a rival's health concerns "for politics". DMK had organised the meeting to thank Karunanidhi and party treasurer M K Stalin for bringing the metro rail project to the city. AIADMK described its meeting as a "thanksgiving meet for puratchi thalaivi (revolutionary leader) amma".

And the squabbling continues

Recently, a senior executive at an energy company in charge of acquiring projects joined a rival company. His former employer is known to put out lower- than-market bids to acquire new projects. Guess what? The company this executive joined has snagged power projects with the lowest bid, from right under the nose of sector majors as well as government-owned giants. Now you know why many corporations in the services sector are enforcing long notice periods on their employees these days.

The case for longer notice period

Kanika Datta has made a valid point in her column "Decisions for the CEO-PM" (July 16) by asking Prime Minister Narendra Modi to fix the messy public sector while wooing the private sector. According to my global experience, her advice is equally applicable to many other countries. There, public sector trimming takes a backseat due to political fears. The benefits from the vibrant growth of the private sector then gets wiped out by the sluggish public sector.I would like to add the state agricultural universities to the list of public sector institutions Datta cites in her column. These universities must be reducing agricultural growth by at least two percentage points. Add to this inefficient public sector corporations functioning in agriculture, including the Food Corporation of India. Why was the 'CEO-PM' in such a hurry to abolish the Planning Commission after coming to power last year without thinking about streamlining the public sector under his command?Chandrashekhar G RanadeWa

Letters: Public sector vs pvt sector

The editorial, "The dilemma returns", ( July 15 ) dissects the recently-released numbers of Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Wholesale Price Index (WPI) vis-à-vis food inflation, a major component of CPI. It raises a pertinent issue - the steep increase in prices of items constituting major sources of proteins, such as pulses, milk and meat. In a country where a majority of the people are vegetarians coupled with a shift towards vegetarianism, meat products cannot be promoted as a source of protein.This brings us to the moot point: What have we done to increase the production and supply of pulses, the prices of which have been consistently rising over the last decade and and don't seem likely to decrease any time soon? Only a few countries produce pulses on a commercial scale.The biggest consumers of pulses are Indians. So the government has to draw up a long-term strategy to ensure smooth supply at reasonable prices to the consumers.Naresh Saxena  New DelhiLetters can be mailed, faxed

Letters: Right to protein

High FMCG imports highlight 'Make in India' weaknesses

Unmade in India

A victory for Barack Obama and new tasks for India

Iran nuclear deal

If you are not overwhelmed by the checks and balances that exist in Indian moviedom already, here's some more. The epic car chase scenes in movies and commercials may soon be banned in Uttar Pradesh, if a new advisory issued by the state's transport department, is followed through. The state government's transport commissioner, K Ravindra Nayak, has reportedly advised district magistrates to ensure a ban on airing rash or dangerous driving scenes/stunts in movies and ads screened in theatres in their respective districts. "If not possible for some unavoidable reasons, the scenes should be accompanied by appropriate warning messages," the advisory added.

No more car chases in movies?

A Twitter handle sympathetic to the Congress had become very active in recent weeks. It was called @Rushdieexplains and carried a picture of the Booker Prize-winning author, Salman Rushdie, and often made fun of the Modi government and its policies. But its luck ran out when the original Rushdie got in to reclaim his name. "Salman Rushdie?" @SalmanRushdie tweeted. "Dear @RushdieExplains, the joke has worn thin. I'm tired of having your opinions ascribed to me. Please tweet under your own name. Thanks." The imposter is now the butt of jokes of all "Bhakt" handles.

What makes Rushdie angry?

Family ties that help you weather a storm can also land you in a jam, as Satyajit Singh Majithia, the president of Khalsa College Governing Council, found out recently. While addressing the annual convocation of Khalsa College, Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal said the Majithia family had received the "maximum benefit of power".  He went on to elaborate that Majithia's son, Bikram Majithia, was a Cabinet minister in the Punjab government, his son-in-law, Sukhbir Singh Badal, is deputy chief minister, and his daughter, Harsimrat Kaur Badal, is a minister at the Centre. Badal's remarks left everyone present - including Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Harsimrat Kaur Badal and Bharatiya Janata Party's Punjab chief Kamal Sharma - thoroughly embarrassed.

Family ties

This is with reference to the report, "Amit Shah's 'acche din' statement was twisted by media: BJP" (July 15). The media has been accused of distorting Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah's statement on 'acche din'. According to reports, Shah had claimed that 'acche din' represented India's glory before the British Raj. Perhaps, he is oblivious of Indian history. The British Raj was immediately preceded by the Mughal dynasty and the Sultanate era, and the latter, that is, the Medieval Age, is called the Age of Darkness by historians.The phrase 'acche din' was used by the BJP, especially during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, to connote the promises made by its then prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. Unemployment, price rise and corruption were the main concerns that surfaced in his speeches at every election rally. But after the non-performance of the first year of his government, the party has been entangled in corruption allegations. Non-issues such as 'love jihad', 'g

Letters: Clarification needed

The current scenario in Greece unambiguously brings out the pros and cons of economic integration among countries. While the advantages, such as a stronger global position, are well known, the negative consequences have been highlighted by the recently feared "Grexit". Integrated economies become vulnerable to mishaps taking place in their union. They have to be ready to provide support to an ailing economy, financially or politically, and also offer financial help in the form of loans that could turn bad. Also, there is the possibility of trade diversion from low-cost countries to high-cost economies. Though a fresh deal has been struck for Greece, there is no guarantee that a "Grexit" would not happen. One only hopes that Greece will be able fulfil the exacting conditions of the deal.Rishika Shankar  MoradabadLetters 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 l

Letters: Ills of economic unions

Subir Roy's column "India remains mostly rural and poor" (July 15) highlights startling information from the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC) report. In the 68 years that India has been independent, and 46 years since the 1969 'garibi hatao' slogan of the Congress, successive governments have tried to improve the quality of life in rural society by promoting education and health measures. These are evident from literacy and longevity figures. However, they have created a paradox: despite better education, Indians now live poor longer. One reason is that most of the money meant for the uplift of the poor does not reach them, thanks to greedy middlemen, government officials and local politicians.The other paradox is that land acquisition is being opposed for infrastructural, agricultural and industrial development in rural areas, even if this could benefit 38.1 per cent of the landless poor and nearly half the number of people, who do odd jobs. Mahatma Gandhi said that India cannot

Letters: Rural paradox

Technology, not just cost, is key to IT's future

TCS fights the slowdown

The dilemma returns

At a hearing on the Sahara case on Monday, there were concerns over the titles of certain properties put on the block to raise money for Sahara group honcho Subrata Roy's bail. When the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) counsel pointed out that similar concerns could arise in other deals, the judge said that buyers should ascertain what they were getting into and understand that the assets were being sold on an "as is where is" basis. To that, the Sebi counsel said, given the state of affairs, the court might consider adding one more phrase and say the sale is on an "as is where is and whatever there is" basis.

On whatever-there-is basis

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Sangh Parivar have been sworn political enemies. Benefits of this rivalry, it seems, have accrued to the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West Bengal. This week's edition of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh mouthpiece, Organiser, has a write-up by Kolkata-based journalist Asim Kumar Mitra. The piece is on how the Left parties, despite losing base in the state, are carrying out a "misinformation" campaign that in the 2016 Assembly polls, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would see its vote share erode by seven percentage points from the 17 per cent it garnered in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Mitra claims the "BJP has emerged as the only party to counter the wrongdoing of the ruling TMC" and that "of late, Mamata (Banerjee) herself has reduced her virulent attack against the (Narendra) Modi government". In the civic polls in May,  the Left and the BJP not only struggled to challenge the TMC's dominance, but also competed for the No 2 spot.

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