Apropos Ashish K Bhattacharyya's column "Business Responsibility Reports can't enforce accountability" (Accountancy, July 8), the Securities and Exchange Board of India deserves to be applauded for requiring the top 100 listed companies to publish a Business Responsibility Report (BRR) in their annual reports to indicate the extent to which they have adopted the National Voluntary Guidelines (NVG) issued by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs. The NVG, which covers a wide range of subjects including stakeholder value, promotion of human rights, environmental protection and customer value, has the added advantage of being voluntary in nature. It has the potential of promoting a culture of socially responsible behaviour by corporations because non-compliance would reflect poorly in their BRRs.This is preferable to the corporate social responsibility (CSR) provisions of the Companies Bill, 2012, that requires the formulation of a CSR policy and monitoring within a mandatory framework. CSR m

Letters: The BRR effect

Business Standard

Do you think some good B-schools should be declared centre of excellence in management?

Students' Corner

Like the rest of the world, it's the oil companies that are dominating the Fortune 500 entries from India in 2013. Government-owned IndianOil topped the list of eight companies from India at 88th  rank (down from 83rd last year). Reliance Industries dropped out of the top 100 from last year to hit 107th rank this year, while two Tata Group companies - Tata Motors and Tata Steel - also figured in the coveted list. Tata Steel has dropped from 401 to 471, thanks to its sagging European operations

Indian companies in Fortune 500

Government failures lead to vaccine shortages

More than a pinprick

The larger lessons of the Ishrat Jahan case

Zero tolerance for violence

Shayan Italia is an Indian born, international songwriter/performer. Apart from his considerable body of work, Shayan (pronounced as Shy-an), a Zoroastrian, is known as the first musician to auction a portion of his future music album's earnings on eBay and raise $18,000 in seven days. He is now planning to launch a food brand, Biryani 250. Nothing unusual about that, except that Tata Sons has issued a public notice saying Ratan Tata has nothing to do with the project either directly or indirectly. Apparently, Italia has sent emails to various people stating that he is working with Tata to start the food brand. The singer clearly jumped the gun big time since all he had done was have a meeting with Tata to seek his advice on how to go about it. Even though Italia has apologised to Tata and wrote that he has sent such emails only to a couple of people he knew, Tata Sons is clearly not taking any chances, hence the notice.

Singer lands Ratan Tata in the soup

The volatile rupee and high current account deficit have resulted in a return to working weekends for some senior finance ministry officials and staff. Finance Minister P Chidambaram has started attending the office on weekends, including last Saturday and Sunday when he called a meeting to discuss the rupee. These long, irregular working hours forcibly remind staff and officials of the days when Pranab Mukherjee was finance minister. Mukherjee had a haphazard schedule and would start late and finish late. The only respite this time is that Chidambaram sticks to his schedule of starting the day by 9 a m and finishing by around 6 p m on weekdays.

Overtime at North Block

Domestic brokerage Motilal Oswal's quarterly preview reports are known for their punchy cover-page cartoons. The latest one is a pithy comment on the slide of the rupee and the different - and somewhat ineffectual - strategies policy-makers are adopting to try and stem it. A safety net entitled "Reforms (Fuel prices, gas prices, power, foreign direct investment limits etc)" held up by hapless businessmen probably says it all.

Slip sliding rupee

This refers to the report "I don't lose sleep over AirAsia" (July 8). IndiGo Airlines President Aditya Ghosh's statements are not only bold and straightforward but also decode the DNA of an astute business strategy. If one looks closely at the rise of IndiGo, it is evident that it never did or followed what its competitors did, rather it did what competitors never did; When does a company's chief executive officer lose his/her sleep if a competitor enters? Only when he/she loses out in setting a de facto standard and solely chooses to be a follower. IndiGo is never known to have made noise over its strategy but silently embraced a strategic intent - an overarching ambition and that is why Ghosh wants every today to be better than yesterday for his employees. About profit and revenue, his statement is reminiscent of what once Muhtar Kent of Coca-Cola said: that he never looked at the share price of his company. By keeping costs low and focussing on increasing supply, Ghosh creates a vir

Letters: Leading strategy

This refers to Ajai Shukla's column "Stop 'Mandalising' the military" (Broadsword, July 9). While his epistle to implement merit as the criteria for promotion is laudable, the concept of "merit", at least in the army, is incongruous. The Order of Merit (OoM) is the best "humour in uniform" joke that stays for life. Indian Commission (IC) numbers are given according to OoM in the Indian Military Academy and have a bearing on promotions thereafter. Perhaps, there should be a weight - 40 per cent for the latest command assignment and 30, 20 and 10 for each of of the earlier annual confidential reports. How can an OoM at the time of being a cadet be relevant at the time of a promotion? The best battalion, brigade, division, corps and army commanders will not become chiefs because someone only higher at IMA made the cut! Are we getting the best people as chiefs and army commanders?T R Ramaswami  MumbaiLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Ba

Letters: What is merit?

This refers to the editorial, "Under new management" (July 9). In a prolonged lull in the  information technology (IT) industry in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, we have not heard a single sob story. Instead, it has proved  a boon with an explosion of individual entrepreneurs. If Indians can boast of leading the bulk of new start-ups, year after year, in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, they might as well do it here. While IT majors must get on with their bread and butter role, hordes of these gifted IT independents need support. This is where the Centre and states can augment the existing venture capital set-ups and other support systems. Agencies like Nasscom and others would do well by focussing their energy on how to grow these crusaders of a new IT boom within India, rather than lobbying abroad.R Narayanan  GhaziabadLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002Fax: (011) 23720201E-mail: le

Letters: Nurturing the IT sector

No room for mistakes while responding to the currency's slide

Managing the rupee fall

Employment Employment increased at faster rates across the manufacturing and service sectors in June, although output growth remained almost flat. Job creation for the private sector overall was moderate, but the quickest in nine months, showed a purchasing managers' index (PMI) survey by HSBC. Business activity is expected to expand in line with forecasts of stronger demand and increased marketing.

Green shoots tracker

INCEPTION: Air India began in 1932, as Tata Airlines, a division of the then-Tata Sons. J R D Tata flew from Karachi to Bombay to flag off the service. In 1946, it was renamed Air India Limited after commercial services were resumed post-World War II. In 1948, it flew the first of many international routes, between Bombay and London, via Cairo and Geneva, using Lockheed Constellation turbo prop planes. The airline was nationalised in 1953 with J R D Tata, the airline's founder, as its chairman.THEN AND NOW: Air India's famous mascot, the Maharajah, was unveiled in 1946. "Then India was known as the land of maharajas and Air India was its only international carrier," recalls the airline's ex-director Jitender Bhargava. It catered to the elite and foreign tourists visiting India. Air India International flew to destinations such as Cairo, Prague, Damascus, Zurich and Istanbul.  "There was no concept of a daily flight, except on routes like London. Most routes were serviced twice a week.

A dethroned Maharajah

India's IT industry has to reinvent itself

Under new management

C P Joshi, former Union minister and newly appointed by the Congress to oversee Assam, Bihar and Bengal, had been a college lecturer teaching psychology at Udaipur, before he took to politics full time. But hints of his earlier profession come to the fore from time to time in various didactic pronouncements. For instance, while addressing party workers in Guwahati recently, Joshi used the metaphor of the baelgadi (bullock cart) to send out a strong message against factionalism. "There can be only one person holding the reins of the baelgadi, something which has to be appreciated and respected. The same is the case with the leadership. Similarly, one cannot question the wisdom of decisions taken by a leader," he said. Last week, in his home state of Rajasthan, he had a word of advice for Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, his arch-rival. "He must be like Bhagwan Shiva and swallow the poison for the greater good of the party." The "poison" to which Joshi was referring was Gehlot's ego.

Joshi's teachings

All India Congress Committee General Secretary Madhusudan Mistry is one of those select Congressmen who have lately been taking on Bharatiya Janata Party strongman Narendra Modi. Mistry, who is a fellow Gujarati and is known to be close to Rahul Gandhi, attacked Modi after the Central Bureau of Investigation chargesheet in the Isharat Jehan "fake encounter" case. He went on to challenge Modi to an open debate with him "anytime and anywhere", to which an intrepid journalist quipped, that the debate should rightly be between Congress scion Rahul Gandhi and Modi. Mistry was quick to respond saying "But Modi has to first combat me before he gets to Gandhi." Truly, Congressmen are never found to be wanting in their loyalty. As a senior journalist was heard muttering, Modi must first duel with the general before he can get to the king.

General sycophancy

The reverberations of the bribes-for-Railway Board scam that cost Pawan Bansal his job continue to be felt in Rail Bhawan. Just as the new minister and Railway Board Chairman got down to cleaning up the image of the country's largest employer, a Central Administrative Tribunal issued a stay order on the appointment of the Railway Board's Member, Traffic following a bureaucrat's complaint that he had been superseded. The upshot is that the Railways' PR team is anxious not to let the media ask too many questions; so it interrupts and interjects at every turn to make certain no interview strays on to a controversial track.

Railways' PR track

This refers to the report "The computer visionary who invented the Mouse" (July 5). Douglas Carl Engelbart the inventor of the Mouse was a visionary who laid the foundation for the modern computing age and the internet. He did not receive royalties for his invention that he later licensed to Apple Inc. Others got the credit for his ideas and made billions from them. Every user of any modern computer, tablet, or smartphone is in debt to Engelbart. Technological advances are allowing scientists to bring in a revolution in building cognitive computers that can function like the brain. Recent developments in the fields of neuroscience, supercomputing, and nanotechnology have made this possible and the Mouse was one of early steps in this evolution of technology. The original Mouse was a wooden contraption that rolled on metal wheels and connected to the desktop with a cord that resembled the tail of a mouse.As a senior citizen, I am comfortable using the Mouse but even I realise that this

Letters: Mouse over

The report "UTI finally gets a head, splits CMD post" (July 4) highlights some disturbing truths.n It took 28 months to decide that one person couldn't fill the chairman and managing director (CMD) position vacated by U K Sinha.n Institutional shareholders could not guide UTI to find a suitable applicant for the post.n What prevailed was the view of a minority shareholder "from outside" (the US firm that owned 26 per cent of UTI's shares).n UTI did not have a succession plan in place  and the government or the public sector organisations that had majority shareholding did not take enough interest in sorting out issues, at various stages of the selection process which led to rejection of a shortlisted candidate.n While there is nothing inherently wrong in splitting the CMD's post, the events that caused the split deserve study to avoid similar situations in the future.When organisations like the Reserve Bank of India can have all top vacancies filled fast, the UTI's failure in this resp

Letters: Stifling public sector

This refers to M J Antony's column "30 million and counting" (Out of Court, July 3). One of the reasons for the increasing number of pending cases in the judiciary is the long breaks it gets, adding up to more than three months. Compared to other countries, our judges have among the largest off-the-court days - the Supreme Court of Ireland has 74 days, Australia has 52 and Canada 11. The 230th Report of the Law Commission of India on Judicial Reforms recommended the vacation period be brought down by at least 10 to 15 days. Further, the report suggested that if judges work even half an hour extra, it will help reduce pending cases.Y G Chouksey  PuneLetters 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

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