Pre-poll surveys conducted by media houses in Chhattisgarh gave the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) a clear edge with some reports predicting that the party would win no less than 60 Assembly seats out of 90. But no one in the BJP headquarters is ready to celebrate. That's because their experience with pre-poll surveys has been distinctly poor. As one local leader pointed out, the same channels conducted surveys in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh and gave the party a clear majority in both states. But the party lost both. Now, leaders are trying to convince the cadres to work hard for their party candidates rather than wallow in complacency.

Good news is bad news

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After an hour-long press conference on his eponymous foundation's plans, Shiv Nadar, founder-chairman of HCL Group, asked a waiter in the five-star hotel for a cup of Madras coffee. He was, however, unhappy with what was served to him -with the milk and sugar separate instead of the milky infusion to which Nadar was referring. "I want Madras coffee the way it is made, premixed with milk," the first-gen IT entrepreneur, now touching 70 years, told the confused attendant. A fresh cup of coffee arrived shortly. Still not satisfied, he reluctantly took a couple of sips. Sitting next to him, Nadar's associate paraphrased his boss's feelings best: "This is Madras coffee, north-Indian style".

Coffee, due North

The Election Commission's recent guidelines for political parties on the use of the social media may prove harder to police than the commission bargained for. Ensuring that the guidelines are followed entails skimming through scads of content on the internet to suss out malicious posts. Since that is well beyond the Election Commission's capacity, the ministry of information technology was approached for help. But there was no solution there either since the ministry has been having its own problems getting internet companies to share data. As an official smirked, since the government was finding it difficult to get information from internet companies on important matters such as terrorist attacks, convincing them to to share information on a few political skirmishes would be a tall order.

Big Brother can't watch

This refers to Sanjeev Ahluwalia's article "Protecting babus from politicians" (November 5). According to the author, only 3 per cent (17.5 million) of our labour force is employed in the government compared with OECD countries that have a better representation of population in public service. In a thickly populated country such as India, 17.5 million is a large number, and if public accountability is created for all of them, then a high level of visible efficiency is possible.Offering fixed tenures to civil servants is a welcome step but introducing quantified appraisals for these gullible bureaucrats is equally critical. The recent riots in Muzaffarnagar demonstrated once again the complete failure of the district administration. Will the people of Muzaffarnagar ever get a chance to review a failed district magistrate?Quantified appraisals for civil servants is the only way to introduce efficiency in the system of public administration. Though the apex court has taken the first step

Letters: Quantified appraisals

This refers to the editorial "An undesirable move" (November 5). There is no doubt the results of opinion polls conducted by responsible media houses are read with interest. However, for most readers, opinion polls only have curiosity value since they are conducted on a wide range of issues and on a sampling basis. This is due to the wide variance between the opinions expressed by the participants in such polls from the actual poll results. Every voter makes up his/her mind well before the poll - whether based on the promises or past performance of the political parties concerned, or on narrower considerations such as caste or religion of the contestants. Hence, to think that opinion polls may sway public opinion (even of the so-called "fence sitters") to vote in a particular way is a naive assumption that is an insult to the intelligence of the average voter. As for the Congress' support to the proposed ban; it only reveals the party's jittery and paranoid state of mind.V Jayaraman  C

Letters: Naive assumption

This refers to the editorial "An undesirable move" (November 5). It's surprising that a 130-year-old party that enacted legislations such as the Right to Information and the Right to Education now wants to curtail the people's freedom of opinion. The hasty reversal of stand shows the Congress' political predicament and insecurities. Nearly 40 per cent of the voters in India are less than 35 years old, and are educated and well informed. It's unfair to underestimate them. A voter has the right to know the general opinion about the government and political parties. If parties can lure voters with freebies and tall promises, then it is absolutely fair if a voter is influenced by opinion polls. The Election Commission should initiate measures to make opinion polls more accurate and transparent, and uphold freedom of opinion granted in the Constitution.N Ramamurthy  ChennaiLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delh

Letters: Transparent opinion polls

Finding auditors to investigate different aspects of the payment crisis in the National Stock Exchange Ltd (NSEL) has become a challenge for the investigative agencies and regulators. Two of the Big Four audit firms were involved in the audit work of the group firms that own NSEL. Another has been an empanelled system auditor in one of the associated exchanges. The fourth one's name has been closely associated with an earlier corporate scandal. Regulators are worried about giving the firm that has already been hired for a couple of forensic audits more work for fear of raising allegations of favouritism. But there are serious doubts if other auditors down the ranks have the bandwidth to perform detailed audits.

NSEL: Auditors wanted

India's Mars mission is well worth the cost

Igniting minds

A Congress in denial cedes space to a slick and energised BJP

Leaderless and lost

Officials in the revenue department have discovered that they now have to engage with two ministers. One of them is familiar - Finance Minister P Chidambaram. The other unexpectedly hands-on politician is Minister of State for Revenue J D Seelam, who took charge in June after his predecessor S S Palanimanickam resigned because his party, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, pulled out of the ruling alliance. Unlike most junior ministers who do little beyond handling the odd transfer and posting, revenue officials say Seelam takes a close interest in tax issues. Perhaps the fact that he is a former civil servant (1984 batch of the Indian Administrative Service from Karnataka) explains his efforts to make the junior minister's post more relevant.

Hands-on junior minister

Here is an example of the pointless cases that weigh down our judicial system, including tribunals. Recently, the Central Administrative Tribunal declared the appointment of a Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) Member invalid after a colleague who had been in contention for the post challenged it. Both contenders were chief commissioners of income tax for whom the post of CBDT Member at the Centre was definitely a coveted post. Ironically, the controversial cadre restructuring of CBDT in June has flattened that hierarchy, so that a chief commissioner and CBDT Member now enjoy the same rank. In fact, the former may just have the edge in terms of work culture, says an official. "As chief commissioner you are the king in your area - the entire staff in your office stands up when you walk in. But a CBDT Member gets only one private secretary and two peons at the most and they are the only people who stand up when he walks in. On top of that, in the ministry you have to deal with the chai

Taxing system

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is under immense pressure since some of the parties within his own government are opposing his visit to Sri Lanka to attend the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) later this month. Although the external affairs ministry has recommended the prime minister to go ahead, Singh seems to be in a Catch-22 situation. Political parties from Tamil Nadu, including Minister of State in the PMO, V Narayanasamy and Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan are openly opposing Singh's visit, alleging that Sri Lanka was indulged in atrocities against ethnic Tamils in India. Being the prime minister of the country, Singh must respect the sentiments of the people in Tamil Nadu, but when it comes to international relationship, especially with a neighbouring nation, diplomacy becomes more important than emotions. We should not forget that ethnic groups had supported the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam that assassinated former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991.

Letters: Diplomacy over emotions

This refers to the editorial "An undesirable move" (November 5). What exactly is election campaigning, if not "influencing" the voter? If the philosophy is that the voter should not be influenced, then all election campaigning should be banned. If we believe in the saying that the proof of the pudding is in the eating, then the voters can be expected to go by their experience with different parties and candidates and vote appropriately in accordance with their perception even in the absence of campaigning. Alternatively, let campaigning be "free for all". Let there be claims by one party and counterclaims by opponents. Essentially, let campaign dynamics play out freely.Kishor Kulkarni  MumbaiLetters 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: Campaign dynamics

Sanjeev Ahluwalia's argument in his article "Protecting babus from politicians" (November 5) is strange and unacceptable.  Bureaucrats are, of course, meant to work objectively with the elected government but they also need to pledge their allegiance to the rule book and public interest. All this has gone wrong because politicians take bureaucrats not as public servants but as their private servants who must serve their interests and overlook public welfare. Bureaucrats who don't fall in line with the politicians are victimised by transfers, suspensions, and improper postings. Two such cases of political victimisation are those of Ashok Khemka and Durga Shakti Nagpal. Khemka was unceremoniously transferred by the Congress regime in Haryana for scrutinising Robert Vadra's land deals. Nagpal was suspended for taking on the sand mafia in Noida that had close links with leaders of the Samajwadi Party. Judicial intervention strengthens democracy, and is always welcome. The Supreme Court dir

Letters: Shielding bureaucrats

The BSE has gone through the roof, setting new records for the Sensex in the past week. Is it outperforming its peers? And what lies underneath its strong performance? As Table 1 shows, the BSE is largely recovering the ground it lost since 2008 - like London's FTSE, it had a fairly regular, U-shaped dip in value since then. Other stock markets have had different patterns since 2008. New York's Dow Jones has had most of its gains since 2008 this year; Istanbul's BIST 100 has actually lost value recently, in spite of big gains since 2008. So has Jakarta's exchange. Notably, Jakarta's index is the only one in this list to have lost value since the US Fed announced its eventual taper in June. Meanwhile, as Table 2 shows, that the Sensex has hit an all-time high does not mean that small- and mid-cap companies have not lost tremendous amounts of value since January 2008. And, even within the Sensex, there has been a tremendous amount of churning to bring the indices' overall value back to w

StatsGuru: 04-November-2013

India must lead efforts for a climate change treaty

Weather at Warsaw

A ban on opinion polls would be an error of judgement

An undesirable move

What does Prime Minister Manmohan Singh have to say about the state of the economy, the United Progressive Alliance's chance of making a comeback in the next elections, Modi, Rahul Gandhi, the recent entitlement laws and other issues of national importance? You would think senior journalists and editors would flock to a meeting with the PM to find out. But ahead of scheduled time, the organisers discovered that the allocated space in the meeting room at the prime minister's residence was half empty. To save embarrassment all round, those journalists who did attend were ushered into a smaller section of the meeting room - and there were empty chairs even then.

Telling absences

The inactivity in government is not restricted to 7, Race Course Road either. Within the bhavans on and around Raisina Hill the only substantive decision senior bureaucrats are said to be taking is approving casual leave applications from their staff. And with P C Parakh's recent experience with the Central Bureau of Investigation serving as a cautionary tale, no one is making notings on administrative files either. Instead, everything is being referred to committees - which is a safe bet since forming committees and setting agendas can reliably drag on till well into 2014, by which time a new government will be in place.

Note of caution

One executive's designation may be another one's mystery. Indo-Japanese car venture Maruti Suzuki has solved the problem by giving its senior management two designations. Chief operating officers (COO) in the Indian subsidiary are designated senior managing executive officers for the benefit of their Japanese counterparts. "In India, COO is a better understood designation, but in Japan executives are conversant with the title of senior managing executive officer. We, therefore, have two sets of business cards," a senior executive explained.

COOperation, Maruti style

This refers to Minati Roy's letter "Tax laws and judgments" (November 4) raising certain issues on the Vodafone tax case. In my opinion, the Income Tax Act, 1961, is one of the simplest and most explicit tax laws in the world. Its beauty is that it has a remedy for most problems. If a taxpayer is taxed heavily and a demand is raise that is considered unlawful, one can file an appeal before the Commissioner of Income-tax (Appeals) and then the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal.The Income Tax Act, however, is not supposed to have an answer for every problem that arises due to sophisticated economic crimes or complicated tax planning. The Vodafone case was a rare exception where, according to the Supreme Court, the shares bought or sold were not taxable because they were not present in India. According to experts, shares represent assets, and the assets were lying in India. Hence, the shares were taxable under the Income Tax Act. Parliament passed a law approving retrospective amendment of th

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