The Companies Bill, 2012, is up for consideration in the Rajya Sabha in the Monsoon session of Parliament, which begins on August 5, and Corporate Affairs Minister Sachin Pilot is confident it will pass. Having been passed by the Lok Sabha, the Bill provides for more stringent regulations on corporate governance and corporate social responsibility. But Assocham President and YES Bank chief Rana Kapoor suggests that the document is weighty in other ways, one of which is literal. "The new Companies Bill has a weight of three kg," he told journalists, which could be a pointer to the level of scrutiny companies operating in India will face in the future.

Weighty watch

Business Standard

Chattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh does not suffer undue modesty when it comes to accepting the plaudits that are heaped on him for being the first state to enact the food security and nutrition Act. Singh, recently in Delhi to participate in a seminar that was organised specifically to celebrate him and the new law, related a story to demonstrate how people in his state viewed the food security law. Travelling in the interiors, he asked a man he met in a forest village who had provided him 35 kg of rice at Rs 2. Singh said the man replied: The rice is given by chawal wale baba (the rice god). Thus, said Singh triumphantly, the forest dweller did not know either the chief minister or anyone else in the administration but had paid the richest tribute to him and the scheme. What more praise can one get? he asked rhetorically. Too true, but Singh may want to hold the self-congratulation a bit, since many forest dwellers in Chattisgarh were forced to live in hiding or in camps for near

Raman Singh & the rice god

The talk on the street is that the government seems to have accidentally found a solution to raging food price inflation. The National Spot Exchange Ltd has said it would liquidate commodity stocks worth over Rs 6,000 crore if the payment crisis persists. Brokers say if these stocks flood the market, prices will come down drastically. "How much can people hoard against such supply? Also, the rains are good this time. So, fresh supply will also come in. All in all, we can finally kill the ghost of inflation, which is good for the stock market," a broker joked.

'Solution' for inflation

Hearings at the special Central Bureau of Investigation court on the 2G telecom spectrum case are not without their moments of unintended humour, notwithstanding the gravity and complexity of the issues under discussion. One such moment was provided by Som Subramaniam, former chief financial officer (CFO) of BPL Communications. He had already been reprimanded by judge O P Saini for giving long-winded and evasive replies but seems to have heeded this warning lightly. Thus, when asked about his involvement in the share-purchase agreement between Essar Teleholdings and BPL Communications, he went off on quite another tangent. Even though he was the CFO, he said, he did not handle the paperwork for that particular deal. He added, "It is correct that this was despite the fact that I was group CFO. I was happy with this arrangement as I had no option. If I was not happy, I would have quit the company, but I did not get any offer."

Hands-free option

This refers to the report "Mamata rolls out red carpet to India Inc" (August 2). One should appreciate Banerjee's energy and enthusiasm in building partnerships and to do away with the notion that West Bengal is a laggard in investment.The present investment scenario in the state is quite gloomy. The chief minister need not be upbeat about the feelers from corporate heads of Mumbai to set up industries in the state, rather she needs to address the root causes that have been plaguing the industrial climate by freeing industry from the extortion of local party bosses and by bringing about a better work culture. She has to categorically specify the land ceiling policy, special economic zones, good governance, foreign direct investment and delivery system of the government.One more glaring effort at industrial rejuvenation in the state is that the Calcutta Stock Exchange - which is one of the oldest capital market institutions and has been an integral part of Kolkata's history- is currentl

Letters: Industrial revival

This refers to the report, "Petrol price hiked by 70p a litre, diesel by 50p" (August 1). In the past two months fuel prices have been revised five times and the worst sufferer is the common man. It goes without saying that the cost of every commodity has increased as a result of this price rise. One has to think that there is something wrong with our economic policy. It is unfortunate that even after 66 years of Independence, we are not able to see the economy grow and the rupee value is oscillating at 60.68/dollar. Despite the fact that the finance minister is an experienced person in the ministry and the prime minister is one of the greatest economists in India, as an ordinary citizen I could not comprehend how this happens. Is it because of the Congress, which has ruled the nation more number of times than any other party with critical and grave financial policies? Or is it because of the corruption that prevails all over the nation?The opposition parties make a hue and cry wheneve

Letters: The price rise pain

China and India are among the worst markets based on price performance in Asia so far this year in dollar terms

China, India markets most negative so far this year

The recent tragedy in Uttarakhand, which left at least 580 dead and over 5,000 missing, has served a wake-up call to authorities tasked with handling emergencies at other prominent temple towns in the country

How safe are India's temple towns?

How long will the BCCI brazenly avoid accountability?

On the back foot

Rising demand for gold and crude and falling exports have  widened the current account deficit, triggering a real balance of payment crisis

Reining in CAD Monster: The hunt for $ 25 bn

Now, the government undercuts its own fertiliser reform

Rolling back reform

Rejection of Niyamgiri mining throws up knotty questions

Mining trouble

Following the Centre's approval for Telangana to become a separate state, Bimal Gurung, president of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, resigned as chief executive of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration for better to lead the agitation for a separate Gorkhaland. Dispelling speculation that Gurung would be asked to take back the resignation, an implacable West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced that it had been accepted. And just to underline her attitude to the Gorkhaland demand, she took a derisive dig at Gurung by revealing to journalists that the resignation letter addressed to Governor M K Narayanan referred to him as K R Narayanan, former President of India. Maybe Gurung has already started feeling too alienated to correctly remember the name of the Governor of a state from which he and fellow gorkhas wish to break away.

Initial discontent

Who will be the next Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor? The question is on top of everybody's mind these days. When Finance Minister P Chidambaram called a press conference this week, naturally the question had to come up. Chidambaram made it clear current Governor D Subbarao was not in the race as he wanted to "move on". Asked about the names of other likely candidate, Chidambaram joked, "I can tell you (Namo Narain) Meena, (Jesudasu) Seelam and I are not eligible." A reporter quickly asked whether people sitting on his right (Economic Affairs Secretary Arvind Mayaram and Chief Economic Advisor Raghuram Rajan) were eligible. To which Chidambaram elliptically repeated that everybody except himself and his two Ministers of State for Finance was eligible.

Not the next RBI governor

A special bench comprising judges K S Radhakrishnan and J S Khehar was hearing the contempt petition filed by the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) against two Sahara group companies. As part of the argument, the Sebi counsel filed a full-page newspaper advertisement put out by the group after the court order in August 2012 to refund the money it had collected. The ad had the image of Bharat Ma on four lions, gave various details about the case and went on to say, "All the depositors need not worry about anything." The judges read the ad with interest and Radhakrishnan's face curved into a smile when the counsel read the line saying, "Of course we shall never blame the respected Judges of our beloved country. It is the machinery that presents facts incorrectly...." To much laughter in the courthouse, the judge said: "They have not said anything against us and they will not, at least till the case is over!"

Suspended judgement

I had high expectations from the article entitled "The Economic Consequences of Professor Amartya Sen" (July 10) by economist Arvind Subramanian, a fellow Washingtonian with an office around the corner. I imagined that he might scrutinise the Nobel Laureate's work and engage creatively with key policy recommendations of Sen's new book with Jean Dreze, An Uncertain Glory: India and Its Contradictions.Unfortunately, the article disappoints on many fronts. In classic polemical style, Subramanian assigns the name "Redistribution through Rights and Entitlements" or "RRE" to programmes he views as busting the Indian budget, and then unconvincingly attributes them to Sen. He never quite defines RRE. Is redistribution really the only reason a government provides public goods and services? No. There are clear efficiency reasons for doing so: to sustain long-term economic growth and advance human capabilities. Dreze and Sen repeatedly document how India has neglected critical investments needed

Letters: Sen and his critics

The danger of defending the rupee revealed

The currency fall

But local polls may not be an ideal predictor for 2014

Trinamool wins rural Bengal

By tradition, all senior officials of the Reserve Bank of India sit beside the governor and deputy governors in post-policy press conferences and Tuesday's arrangement was no different. When the senior officials walked into the press room a little ahead of the governor and his deputies, staff were still placing name plates and bottles of mineral water on the table. As a standard practice, the label on the mineral water bottles were also removed, causing a senior official to sarcastically observe, "This is like Sahara withdrawing endorsements." He was referring, of course, to the controversial Lucknow-based group's endorsement of the Indian cricket team.

Bottling it up

Almost every industry in India has been wary of regulation and monitoring and no one more so than the country's clinical research industry. In fact, clinical research companies, which experiment or test medicines on humans, is turning bitter about government surveillance not least because of the stringent conditions and strong criticism, even from the Supreme Court, for various unethical practices that have led to increasing incidents of deaths. But the complaints have now descended to carping, so much so that the managing director of a leading Ahmedabad-based clinical research organisation said, "The government in this country wants to regulate everything, except Bollywood and politics."

Clinical view of regulation

This refers to Subir Roy's column "The ethical deficit of private hospitals" (Value for Money, July 31). The media reported a case in Madurai two weeks ago where the duty nurses in a private hospital attended to a delivery case by obtaining instructions from the doctor by cell phone. The baby and mother did not gain consciousness and were rushed to another hospital which found them to be in serious condition. Since the doctor was not available there, they were both taken to one of the city's "big" hospitals where the treatment did not succeed and both died. As for public hospitals, the situation is no better. Medical supervision leaves much to be desired. In almost every reported case of infant deaths, it is observed that basic sanitation had been ignored. Ombudsman or not, what is more important and urgent is improvement in the quality of supervision. What are director generals of medical services for?S Subramanyan MumbaiLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business

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