This refers to the article "The net is taking over" (BS Weekend, January 25). One has to be cautious while on social networking sites. People blindly opt for the "public" option on such sites. For example, always select either the "Only Me" or "Friends" option when you are posting content online. If you select "Friends", your friends will be able to see your information and content. If you do not approve or confirm, your friends will not have access to your Facebook account. Also, even after you approve them, you have the option of blocking people. Before opening an account on sites such as Facebook or Twitter, you should also know how to deactivate it. The same applies when you write a blog. There is not much fascination in having a page on a social networking site, and recent reports have predicted that Facebook may die out by 2017.Deendayal M Lulla  MumbaiLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002F

Letters: On(line) your guard

Business Standard

This refers to Nitin Pai's column "Don't leave diplomacy to diplomats" (The Asian Balance, January 20). The article seems to give the impression that India's existence depends on being subservient to the US. India is an independent country and it must take necessary actions to maintain its independent status. The US for long has been heaping insults on our diplomats. But this time things got worse when a lady, that too a diplomat, was subjected to a cavity search, and handcuffed. Does a crime, even a visa fraud, require such extreme treatment? Our diplomats acted correctly by lashing out at the US authorities. US diplomats have enjoyed higher privileges, but refuse to provide the same to Indian diplomats. Also, one would be surprised to know that the dedicated parking of Indian diplomats has been taken away in New York, and the US embassy had closed Nyaya Marg on its own, something that India ignored.N V Singh  New DelhiLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business S

Letters: A diplomatic game

Tamil Nadu-born scientist Arogyaswami Joseph Paulraj (pictured) became the first Indian to be awarded the Marconi Society Prize, 2014 - widely considered equivalent to the Nobel Prize for technology. Interestingly, the award is named after Nobel laureate Guglielmo Marconi, who is alleged to have beaten Sir Jagadish C Bose to the Nobel by patenting radio technology a few days before Bose's own invention in this area could receive similar recognition. Urban legend has it that Bose became so disillusioned by this setback that he gave up that discipline and began research in a different area and developed the crescograph that conclusively established that plants also have life. And now an Indian gets the Marconi award, that too for his work on wireless communication!

Tuning into India

A price index for agri commodities: A Business Standard and Indicus Analytics initiative

Indicus price monitor

On the 65th Republic Day, it is worth looking at some indicators of how far India has come since January 26, 1950, and how far it still has to go. One of the most dramatic performances for free, republican India must be, as shown in Table 1, life expectancy; in the first 15 years and then again in the past 10 years, life expectancy has risen sharply. Literacy rates, shown in Table 2, have also steadily increased every decade; on the first anniversary of Republic Day, less than a fifth of Indians could write. The most recent years have also seen a jump in enrolment ratios in middle schools, as demonstrated in Table 3. Demography-wise, developments are mixed. Table 4 shows how the growth rate of the population finally began to decline in recent decades. The problem with India's sex ratio continues to be noticeable - though, as Table 5 shows, it has recovered slightly from a low in the early 1990s. And, all these people can be fed, too, as Table 6 shows; India produces 5 times as much foo

StatsGuru-27-January-2014

This refers to the editorial "Too grandiose a plan" (January 24). The plan to interlink rivers to mitigate floods and droughts sounds seductive in theory but has limitations in practice. India has 2.4 per cent of the world's land area but it sustains eight per cent of the world's biodiversity, and altering the flow of rivers is not the best way to protect our forests that are already diminishing. Forests are a major source for water systems. The immediate example are the Western Ghats where the forest cover is dwindling and rainfall patterns are erratic. Rivers in south India are not perennial. However, the rivers in north India depend on monsoons and the Himalayan glacier melt, but even these flows are not assured. China proposes to build dams and modify the run of its south-flowing rivers. We could, in the long run, be left with canals and no water flows.H N Ramakrishna, BangaloreLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafa

Letters: River tactics

The recent grant of minority status to the Jain community clearly shows again the politics of religion and caste being practised in our political framework. Such announcements are made mostly during the pre-election period to garner electoral support. Ideally, any such status should be judiciously awarded with attached conditions, otherwise the justice, which is aimed at bringing up the unprivileged sections, would turn out to be an unfair deal for the so-called privileged section. The status must be attached with specific privileges that would be available to a section - defined according to their specific needs. It is rather superfluous to have 50 per cent reservation for a community in colleges even if they are run by the same community. Similarly, the rights associated with such a status must be limited, and available only for a certain period of time. Hence, a measurement system must be drawn for granting of such statuses, and must be monitored and controlled on a regular basis. T

Letters: Politics of religion and caste

The editorial "Quality, not quantity" (January 24) focusses on a few important issues relating to the setting up of Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs). The conflict between quality and quantity is minimised if capital is abundant, but in practice, capital is a scarce resource. The setting up of new IITs, therefore, inevitably means diverting capital investment from the existing campuses at a time when intakes in these institutes are going up significantly. As a result, infrastructural deficiencies in the exisiting institutes are also showing up. The Anil Kakodkar Committee Report's target of producing 10,000 doctoral fellows annually by 2020-25 has fallen victim to the same fallacy of conflating quality with quantity. The doctoral products from existing Indian institutions, as the demand from industry underlines, have very few takers. Hence, enhancing output without quality control is just as senseless as creating IITs without adequate inf

Letters: Infrastructural deficiencies

If anyone needs a compelling sign that the economy is in dire straits, here is one. The relationship manager of a multinational bank that is keen to expand its footprint in India recently called one of his clients. The call, however, had nothing to do with the client's portfolio. Instead, the functionary enquired whether his client would require a "marriage loan", a service typically limited to small government-owned banks, cooperatives and money-lenders. A sign that corporate lending, the traditional preserve of foreign banks, is drying up?

Banking on nuptials

The Aam Aadmi Party's two-day protest caused many a high official to resort to aam aadmi ways to get to their offices. Though the protest took place in front of Rail Bhavan, the police had cordoned off a wide swathe of roads around the area to all vehicles. Thus, the Planning Commission deputy chairman, many of the members and even the secretary had to walk from Patel Chowk to Yojana Bhawan as stern policemen forbade even their labelled vehicles to cross the no-entry zones. Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, whose office (Krishi Bhawan) was bang in the middle of the stand-off, worked out of the Department of Food Processing office which was well outside the no-go zone.

Aam aadmi officials

Seminal shift in politics?

Handshake with the East

Business Standard analyses one family's finances and suggests a suitable way forward

Case study

When David Stern steps down as commissioner of the National Basketball Association (NBA) on February 1 after 30 years at the helm, he'll leave the league vastly different from the one he inherited in February 1984, thanks primarily to his leadership on labour relations, drug testing, team expansion, etc

NBA's most valuable team

Bhargav Dasgupta, MD & CEO, ICICI Lombard General Insurance, answers your questionsI was recently approached by an agent who insisted ladies should own a policy covering women-specific diseases. I am 31 and am presently covered under a plan offered by my employer. How important is a women-centric insurance plan? How is it better than other health covers?A regular indemnity health insurance plan provides cover to the policyholder against medical expenses irrespective of the gender. Today, a majority of the health insurance plans also provide cover for women-centric cases like maternity expenses.  I advise you to focus on the extent and quantum of covers offered by the health insurance policy and the terms and conditions of the policy. If a regular health insurance policy provides medical expense covers in line with your needs, there is no need for a separate women-centric plan.I have been enquiring about buying a new washing machine and one of the retailers offered free insurance fo

Readers' Corner: General Insurance

Got pre-2005 notes? Don't panic

Even as Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders accused the media of being partisan in their coverage of the Somnath Bharti episode, the party has realised in some manner that the media is essential for them to spread appropriate messages. As the party struggled to defend Bharti's behaviour, journalists received mails with links to videos of sting operations conducted by the party in Khirki Extension. These videos depicted the wrongdoings that were taking place in the area where Bharti had recently conducted raids. Hence, AAP might be accusing the media of being biased, but behind the scenes the party is actively pursuing journalists to gain some coverage.

AAP's media conundrum

The Congress was caught in an embarrassing position when its latest advertisement, in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls, prominently projecting party Vice-President Rahul Gandhi mouthing the slogan, "Mein nahin, hum", was labelled by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as "copycat". The BJP targeted the Congress, saying the party had "copied" an earlier Narendra Modi advertisement with the same tagline, prepared for a BJP convention in 2011. The Congress attempted to defend itself using a similar analogy. "The 'aam aadmi' tagline was initially ours," said spokesperson Shobha Oza. "Congress ka haath aam aadmi ke saath was our slogan. Aam Aadmi ke sipahi was also a Youth Congress slogan," added Oza, implying that the Aam Aadmi Party had appropriated the slogan but the Congress had not objected to the move.

Advertising blitz gone wrong

Thirty years after 1984, it's Apple that's big brother

The Mac revolution

India's traditional strengths in attracting foreign investment remain, but corporate taxation and inflexible labour laws weigh on the negative side, EY's India Attractiveness Survey 2014 shows. The survey polled 502 global executives, of which a majority said they will increase their presence in India. But 32 per cent said they were not planning to invest in India, as against 16 per cent in a 2012 attractiveness survey.

India: Still hot for fdi but with new hurdles

Narendra Modi missed the point about IITs, IIMs

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