I have been as forthright as I can be; I am an open book: Manmohan Singh

Business Standard

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Well begun...

At every monetary policy press conference hosted by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the convention was for the executive directors to arrive at the conference hall first and Governor D Subbarao to follow a little later accompanied by all four deputy governors. At Raghuram Rajan's first press conference, however, executive directors and deputy governors preceded him into the hall and the new governor walked in unaccompanied a little later. A change of style with a change of guard?

Walking the talk?

This departure from tradition confused media photographers thronging the hall, with comic results. Moments before Rajan was due to walk in, a person, probably a security and protocol officer, entered the conference hall and because everyone was expecting Rajan, photographers frantically started clicking. It took a moment for the person to realise what was happening before he considerately told them, "I'm not the governor." This sent a wave of laughter through the conference hall prompting deputy governor Urjit Patel to joke, "We should play this game more often!"

Proxy fame

S Ganesh, counsel for Sahara in the case before the Supreme Court, was explaining the "tax deducted at source" (TDS) mechanism at some length to the court. When judge K S Radhakrishnan interrupted to point out that the the data could be checked on the income tax department website, Ganesh returned a pained answer. "The site is full of loopholes, your honour. If you rely on it then the money is gone forever. That is why chartered accountants say go after the client's blood and get the TDS certificate," he explained. At which Aryama Sundaram, another Sahara lawyer, stood up and said, "Ganesh is now reflecting on his personal problem." As everyone laughed, Radhakrishnan agreed that the problem was universal. "The Supreme Court also faced it last year," he said.

Universally taxed by TDS

Barun Roy's column "A dangerous wasteland" (Asia File, September 5) has rightly highlighted a serious problem. The e-waste (management & handling) Rules, 2011 came into effect in 2012, but its progress has been tardy. The guidelines and rules are based on the Extended Producer Responsibility principle that assign responsibility on the producers for collection and processing of e-waste. With a boom in the use of mobile phones and compact fluorescent lamps, each vendor should have collection bins to collect the waste. The information on electronic scrap collection centres for consumers has not been made available in most cities. A study by an NGO exposed the absence of public information on most pollution controls boards. As many as 15 of the 35 boards did not even have any information related to e-waste on their websites, which is a key public interface point. The country is saddled with huge toxic waste and merely creating rules and regulations is meaningless unless they are public

Letters: E-waste menace

India's court system is clogged by an overburden of cases, most often the result of the litigious nature of certain laws relating to property. At the same time, courts are under-staffed and judges under-paid. As a result, many judges are forced to pass verdicts after relying disproportionately on oral arguments put forth by counsels, without being able to go in depth into the merits and demerits of each case, especially considering pages of evidence routinely run into hundreds and thousands of pages. Many powerful businessmen have realised this lacuna in the system, and exploited it by ensuring that the top 10 or 15 counsels in their relevant state's capital city are somehow on their payrolls. This precludes those counsels from appearing on behalf of anyone who opposes these entities due to a conflict of interest. The resultant perversion of the cause of justice is plain to see. Instead of trying to push carbohydrates down the throats of the malnourished, the government of India might

Letters: Courting a weakness

This refers to the report "Petrol price raised by Rs 2.35/l, Moily makes case for more" (September 1). Almost similar to the impact of changes in base interest rates on the cost of funds across sectors, the periodic hike in fuel prices has a direct impact on the prices of all products and services. This price hike is a way to subsidise the losses incurred by oil companies. As long as a rational costs-prices-wages-income policy is not in place and unemployment remains at ugly levels, problems of governance will persist. It is evident from the pattern of asset-formation that workers in lucrative sectors such as services, mining and IT are paid starvation wages. While everything else can be left to the mercy of market forces, the government has a social responsibility to protect the employees' interests. The same applies to the prices of food articles and other essential items and services. The food security Bill or employment guarantee schemes are just "first-aid" solutions.M G Warrier

Letters: Wages, prices and income

Sector-wise allocations in 2013The telecommunication services, industry attracted the most investments, accounting for 16.18% of the total investments in terms of deal value with an aggregate of $1.26 billion (1 deal). The real estate was the second, attracting $1.25 billion across 32 deals in 2013. Utilities, software & services and automobiles & components were the other top sectors.

A snapshot of PE activity & deals

Deregulation was incomplete, and the industry suffers for it

Sugar slowdown

The government moves forward on de-risking real estate

A little safer

In the West, the press tends to assign celebrity couples hybrid nicknames, "Brangelina", used to describe American actor couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, being among the more famous. Now, it seems, the trendy tech world isn't far behind. After the announcement of an M&A deal between Microsoft and Nokia on Tuesday, the Internet world has been attempting to create a single name to refer to the amalgamated entity. After experimenting with several logos and names such as NokiaSoft, MicroKia seems to have gained traction. The tech community had another one to refer to a similar deal between Google and Motorola last year (Googorola). The way the information technology industry is going, there may well be several more before the year is out.

Enter, 'MicroKia'

Finance Minister P Chidambaram may not have quick fix solutions for the current economic problems, but some of his officials think they have a good idea of how to bring down costs for the government. One such, only half-facetious, suggestion that came up during a lunch break when some officials were pondering the problem is to ask government staff and officers to work from home for three days a week. As Saturdays and Sundays are off-days, offices will open only on two days a week and this will save a lot on power, fuel, food and various other office expenses. So inflation, subsidies, fiscal deficit, all will be in control - or so it is hoped!

Home-grown cost cutting

Smartphones can play some pretty "un-smart" tricks. A senior official of an industry association in Ahmedabad recently fell prey to the menace of auto-correct when texting the phone number of a person surnamed Shah and whose first name ended in "it". The resultant text message the journalist received read "Please call Mr. Dammit Shah (phone no.) for details." A correction followed swiftly, however.

Damn you, Auto Correct

As a former British colony, India has co-opted the English language and made it its own but pronunciations still vary widely across regions, the butt of much stand-up comedy. Recently, however, faulty pronunciation forced an embarrassing correction from a newswire. Under perpetual pressure to be the first with breaking news, it flashed a take saying the accused in the recent rape case in Mumbai were attacked with someone wielding an axe when they were produced in court. How did someone with an axe get past the huge security cordon in court? There was no time to check this small but vital fact so the item went out as heard and taken down by the sub-editor. When the news spread like wildfire, the newswire realised it had been the victim of the reporter's pronunciation: the accused had been attacked with eggs and not an axe.

The aggs effect

Apropos the report "Demographic Dividend fast becoming a curse" (August 30), the author has presented a rich resource of analysis and placed the blame on non-labour intensive growth and a skewed sex ratio that germinates into young uneducated, sexually frustrated "loafers". This conclusion was deduced unanimously by various researchers. Prima facie, it appears accurate, but it makes a naive assumption that well-educated men, having well-paying and productive jobs and a family life, have a high opportunity cost of attempting a sexual assault, and hence restrain themselves. The recent events, much in relation to India as well, do not resonate in the same scale with this conclusion. Take the case of Phaneesh Murthy for instance.A recent survey conducted by The Huffington Post on Workplace Harassment had some interesting revelations to make as well. According to the poll, 13 per cent of respondents reported having been sexually harassed by a boss or another superior, and 19 per cent have b

Letters: Sexual harassment

Apropos the editorial "Time for a rethink" (September 4), it is depressing that some Indian industrialists are approaching the US to compel the government to adopt pro-business measures to revive the economy. US policies, whether in war or commerce, are guided by high self-interest, though they are masked as steps to save democracies or help emerging economies. The recent nuclear deal with the US is essentially to provide a market for idle US suppliers. The curb on engaging Indian software specialists in the US is also for the same purpose. To expect that country to assist our businesspersons to revive their dwindling fortunes would be, if at all, essentially on US terms.Besides, barring a few noteworthy exceptions, our business community was also guided by self-serving strategies. However, after 1991 they got new wings and more confidence to promote India as a model of fast growth. They prospered and went abroad. In this context, their current request to the US to help them is out of

Letters: A depressing effort

LAST WEEK WE ASKED:  Do you think IITs should do a rethink on the new IIT-JEE pattern and change it?

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