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

Business Standard

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

Letters: Don't blame the Act

This refers to the report "RBI may have more role left for Nachiket" (November 4). Though Nachiket Mor's credentials are excellent for the Reserve Bank of India's financial inclusion panel, the absence of any public sector bankers in the panel is surprising. Though we may have a lot to say about public sector banks (PSBs) on many aspects of banking, it is not possible in India to have any achievement on financial inclusion without their support. The PSBs have also expanded tremendously in the country, especially in rural and semi-urban areas, and their role is crucial in financial inclusion.Anuja Jayasankar  ThrissurLetters 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: Why exclude PSBs?

In his column "Inventing a history" (Ticker, November 2) Mihir S Sharma makes strange arguments. What convinced him that Sardar Patel was "never as popular with Congress rank and file as Nehru"? On the contrary, Gandhiji called Patel "Sardar" precisely because he successfully led the Congress rank and file in many difficult struggles, including the "Bardoli Satyagraha". Nobody will believe the author's claim that Sardar Patel was not a "national vote getter" compared to Jawaharlal Nehru and hence, the latter prevailed. The claim is factually incorrect as well as logically irrelevant. The Congress was expected to have unchallenged control over electorate in free India, and in the list of qualities sought in the new leader the one of "vote-getter" would be near the bottom. What prevailed was Gandhiji's intransigence and none of Nehru's perceived qualities.Mahesh D Bakhai  MumbaiLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg

Letters: Patel's popularity

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

Indicus price monitor

Business Standard brings you a snapshot of average current rates and unit sizes in localities that offer property in a price range of Rs 1.5 cr to Rs 2 cr

Realty check

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

Case study

Favourable global liquidity will keep investors happy

Samvat wishes

UPA's failure to reform shows up, starkly

No place for business

Communist Party of India leader Gurudas Dasgupta is an accessible politician, especially to members of labour unions. Recently, however, he was flummoxed when a Member of Parliament called him seeking his help in a criminal case linked to coal block allocations. Dasgupta heard the caller patiently, and then asked, "Who have you called?" The surprised caller answered, "Is this not Gurudas Kamat?" He was referring to the former United Progressive Alliance minister from Maharashtra who is an advocate by profession. When the communist leader identified himself, the caller hastily rang off.

The wrong Gurudas

A drug-maker recently sent out chocolates as a Diwali gift to its stakeholders. Nothing unusual about that, except that chocolates would hardly be associated with health. In fact, the company went a step further and fashioned the chocolates to look like pills and stamped the packaging with its brand name. A sweetener after all the bitter news in the pharma business this year, perhaps?

Sweet medicine

A cleanliness drive is turning out to be a tourist attraction on Rajpath, the road joining the India Gate monument with Rashtrapati Bhavan on top of Raisina Hill. Every evening as crowds gather for an evening out, a New Delhi Municipal Council employee pedals up and down the stretch with a portable compact public announcement (PA) system fitted to his bicycle. The recorded message from the system reminds visitors to India Gate and surrounding areas to put their litter in the dustbins. These PA systems are similar to those seen during the people's movement by Anna Hazare and Arvind Kejriwal at Jantar Mantar. A pre-election political gimmick by the ruling party, to be sure, but nobody quite minds this one!

Cleaning up the system

Many an HR expert says attrition in sectors such as information technology (IT) and IT enabled services is often the result of people changing jobs to keep up with their rising equated monthly instalment (EMI) payments. Oddly, the same reason appears to explain higher retention in slower-growing sectors too. HR professionals now refer to the trend as "EMI-driven retention", because it has nothing to do with the efforts of HR managers.

EMI-driven retention

Apropos the reports connected with Sardar Patel's 138th birth anniversary, it is unfortunate that such a great occasion is being used by politicians for mutual acrimony and competing claims over his legacy. Instead, this is an occasion to recollect Patel's contribution to the building up of post-Independence India, and to find out ways for solving the country's current problems.It has to be remembered that the British left India in 1947 after transferring power to the people of India. In respect, only two thirds of the country's area (Pakistan apart), was inhabited by three fourth of its population. The rest, covered by princely states, was allowed to go its own way and most of the princes felt that they had become independent kingdoms. Jawaharlal Nehru was furious, called it Balkanisation, and entrusted the task of solving the problem to Patel. The patience, dexterity and statesmanship with which Patel handled it in two stages, is a lesson all the politicians should learn. He first pe

Letters: Patel's prowess

In the Vodafone tax case, the Supreme Court gave the verdict that the imposition of tax should be explicit in tax laws. This vindicated our claim that foreigners trusted India's judicial system. The income tax Act has been amended and made explicit. But doing so, with retrospective effect, trampled the verdict. The charge of denial of justice to the foreigners has harmed India economically also. Laws with retrospective effect should be made to provide relief or, at most, to increase the penalty or punishment. But this time it was made to indict someone who was not guilty at the time of commission, and this created an ominous precedence. Nobody has challenged the judgment so far. Alas, the Supreme Court has to remain silent until the issue is brought to it officially.The liability of tax on transfer of Indian assets between foreign parties, with consideration in foreign currency, was not made explicit by the authors of the original draft Act. Did the realisation of this omission prompt

Letters: Tax laws & judgments

The willingness to access the latest wave of technology, high rate of  IT adoption and usage, differentiate leaders from followers and laggards, says a BCG survey. Not only this, leaders also tend to grow faster than the economy as a whole

Tech leaders are early adopters of each new wave of technology

Prabhu Kannan

Jeby Cherian

Big Data - dubbed 'the new oil' by the World Economic Forum - has become a key focus area for corporate leaders today. A recent international survey of finance professionals, including those working at the CEO and the CFO level, conducted by Chartered Institute of Management Accountants and American Institute of CPAs reveals that 86 per cent of organisations are struggling to turn growing volumes of data into valuable insight and are suffering as a result. Can Big Data really change the way business is done? Or are companies getting caught in a hype?Prabhu KannanDirector, Commerce & Innovation, SapientNitroMarketers are well-versed with the techniques of targeting and personalisation that they have employed for decades. Personalisation strives to serve relevance while acknowledging intimacy but the question that is topmost in the marketer's mind is, "Can I predict or even shape desire in my target consumer?".A combination of new technology and consumer changes are making this possi

The paradox of more: Magic or misery?

Online marketplace, e-commerce,digital commerce

If you are looking to market like a big brand on a small budget, hitching a ride on an online marketplace may be a good optionKunal BahlCo-founder & CEO, Snapdeal.comBijoy Roy has a small leather factory in Burdwan, West Bengal, where he manufactures high quality leather bags, wallets and jackets. He sells these products through retail outlets in Asansol, Durgapur and Kolkata. He has been looking to expand outside of West Bengal for three years now but has had to put it off due to high costs involved in setting up retail stores in metropolitan cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai. Further, he realises that he knows nothing about branding and marketing nationally because of which he would not be able to sustain the growth in his business.According to a recent study by Zinnov, there are over 50 million such small and medium business (SMB) units in India, accounting for more than a third of the country's GDP with only 10 million of them being technology ready. In order to

Selling on a shoestring

Utterly butterly undelicious

Kolkata's goodbye to Tendulkar defines bad taste

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