The British government, according to a Sunday Times report, is piloting a scheme targeted at visitors from six countries, including India, which it considers "high-risk". A look at the plan, which is to be implemented from November

UK drops Â£3,000 visa bomb

Business Standard

The UK should be more welcoming of Indians

Insular Britain

The government and the Reserve Bank of India are trying hard to make financial inclusion a reality but their best efforts are tangled in red tape. Recently, a young man from a scheduled tribe visited a public sector bank in Kota, where he worked, to open an account. Under the Know Your Customer norms, the bank required a document that offered proof of address. Since the only identity document he had was a ration card with the address of his home town, the bank told him to obtain a Rs 100 affidavit from his landlord. The trouble is that in smaller cities landlords neither give rent receipts nor sign rent agreements. And in this case, too, he declined to provide an affidavit. So in the end, the tribal could not open a bank account. If this is what happens in a small town, the situation in rural India can only be imagined.

Financial exclusion

The financial fraud by his company and subsequent arrest might have tainted his image, but Saradha Group promoter Sudipta Sen appears unwilling to change some aspects of his lifestyle even in judicial custody. Appearing at a local court in Kolkata for a hearing recently, he asked the court staff for a cigarette. Naturally, he was refused since the court premises, like all public places, are a no-smoking zone by law. But Sen was not about to listen to reason and threatened a hunger strike and even refused to drink water served to him. It took the intervention of senior police officers to pacify him, although he was still not allowed to smoke.

Fire over a smoke

Mocking queries from the Opposition and the media about Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi's conspicuous absence for fully eight days after the floods hit Uttarakhand have so riled the Congress faithful that its spokesmen are on a short fuse. Gandhi was missing around the time of his 43rd birthday and was rumoured to be abroad. On Monday, the issue of the Gandhi scion's initial absence followed uncomfortable queries about the inept response to the disaster by the Congress-run state government. It all became too much for Congress spokesperson Renuka Chowdhury, who shot back at journalists, "You do not know what he [Rahul] is doing. What do you want, that we should be telling you when he has his hair cut, when he spits and when he sneezes?" On his return to the capital, Gandhi made up for lost time and was seen flagging off relief trucks at the Congress headquarters in the morning and flying to Dehradun in the evening. He was even slated to visit Kedarnath, site of the maximum destruct

Rahul Gandhi's habits

This refers to the report "Centre may eye FDI to finance high CAD" (June 18). This and many other reports refer to the government trying to attract more foreign direct investment (FDI) through various concessions to finance the current account deficit (CAD). However, FDI actually plays a major role in worsening CAD. Most companies that attract FDI consume the foreign exchange received through FDI in less than two years, and then become net consumers of foreign exchange. According to a recent study, multinational companies, on an average, send out net foreign exchange more than eight times its capital. While FDI comes once, from second year onwards, a multiple of that amount is required year after year for servicing the investment and for their imports. In fact, another report showed how Indian corporates had become net consumers of foreign exchange and their import dependency had increased to 30 per cent. Multinationals are the worst culprits - as far as the net consumption of foreign

Letters: Financing the CAD

Apropos the editorial "After the deluge" (June 25), the immediate task for authorities in Uttarakhand should be the evacuation of approximately 80,000 people trapped at various locations. Why are the other states sending their officials and dignitaries to the flood-hit state ostensibly to provide relief? These well-meaning politicians and officials must realise that their visit will, in fact, impede rescue operations and do more harm than good. Various state governments have exhibited their parochialism by sending officials to assist people from their own states. Basic rescue work is done by the defence and other paramilitary forces. And they perform their duty without any discrimination. At best, the state governments and non-governmental organisations should rush relief materials as well as set up base camps at Rishikesh, Haridwar and Dehradun.M M Gurbaxani  BangaloreLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Del

Letters: Too many officials

This refers to A Seshan's letter "Irrational Third Front" (June 24). The Janata Dal (United) under Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar should galvanise all like-minded regional forces who believe in equidistance from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress to merge their identities and form a real Third Front under one umbrella. A new party must, thus, unfold to provide a viable alternative. There is surely no harm in once again trying former Prime Minister V P Singh's experiment of the 1990s, when a new party received massive mass appeal. Back then, the National Front coalition's "junior" ally BJP brought down the government on Mandal and Mandir politics, and voted with the Congress during a no-confidence motion in Parliament. When the BJP was in  power for six years, it did nothing to clean its violent image formed during the Babri Masjid episode. This breach of trust by the BJP - stabbing a well-intentioned government - paved the way for corrupt people to return.Chandra Shek

Letters: A Third Front experiment

Interview with Director-General, India Meteorological Department

Monsoon will revive: L S Rathore

NEW DATASOWING OF PULSES & OILSEEDS IN FULL SWINGHeavy rains aided the sowing of pulses and oilseeds, crops that have repercussions on inflation. These cover almost the entire spectrum of inflation-while pulses constitute food articles, oil seeds account for non-food primary (unprocessed items) articles; edible oil, extracted from oil seeds,

Green shoots tracker

Uttarakhand rescue efforts laudable, but time to fix core issues

After the deluge

Govt must review the proposal to bail out power plants

Pooling tariffs

Unlike most of us who have switched from snail mail, the government continues to patronise the services of India Post. But in one case at least, this practice has created a quaint problem - the kind that happens only in India. Nirman Bhavan has ended up with two pin codes. This is how it happened. Nirman Bhavan is located on the same road as the equally busy Udyog Bhavan and shared the same pin code: 110011. Since both Bhavans house key ministries, the post office struggled to keep up with the workload. So the postal department in its wisdom decided to create a new post office and, therefore, a new pin code for Nirman Bhavan: 110108. Not that this helped, because not all Nirman Bhavan ministries complied. So, for example, Health and Family Welfare and Urban Development continued to use the old pin code of 110011, whereas, the more recently set up ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA, formed in 2004) used the new 110108. Naturally, this duality caused chaos but appeal

Needled by pin codes

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is determined to woo the Muslim vote in the state and has taken to making comments that are so obtuse as to make her auditors wince. Addressing a rally a couple of weeks ago ahead of the Panchayat elections, she sought to establish her pro-Muslim credentials by telling the audience she could cook biryani, firni and narkel naru. The first two might be dishes that have a Mughal, and therefore Islamic, significance, but the last is a quintessentially Bengali sweet that is a common offering in pujas. Although, it is true that Bengalis love their food, surely she could have come up with something better than her culinary skills as a reason to vote for her party.

Cooked up

There was panic in the department of electronics and information technology recently. A team of senior officials had to travel to Tel Aviv, Israel, and there were no seats available on Air India. This became an issue because government employees are mandated to fly only on the state-owned carrier in sectors covered by it, even if private carriers have cheaper options. The only routes on which seats were available had long stopovers, which officials wanted to avoid. Several permutations and combinations later, most officers took the trouble of reaching out to the civil aviation ministry for special permission to fly a private carrier (which had a more convenient route and also a much cheaper fare). The agenda of the trip was to woo Israeli companies to invest in India's electronics manufacturing sector. Whether the trip yielded any results or not, at least there were some savings for the government - but by default!

Saving via a private route

This refers to the report "Imported coal to now make power costlier" (June 22). The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA's) decision to allow power companies to pass on to consumers the extra cost of importing coal to bridge the domestic fuel shortage is flawed and dangerous. One wonders if the sole consideration was to prevent thousands of crores of investment from going sour. The CCEA has no authority to take such a decision. Power rates can only be set by the statutorily formed Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC), or by a contract between the buyer and the seller. This move also seeks to change the terms under which contracts were awarded under bidding - terms that excluded the rise of the cost of coal from future rate consideration. This can quite conceivably make redundant the expert committee set up under the CERC order, and open the gate for legal challenges by parties who had lost out in the bidding. While one acknowledges that an increase in the cost of coa

Letters: The call on coal

Apropos Sunil Sethi's column "No country for young men" (Al Fresco, June 22), it is indeed a palpable paradox that a country with nearly 75 per cent of the people below the age of 35 continues to be led by old men, so much so that a 43-year-old man is regarded as a youth leader in one political party, and a 63-year-old "young" man represents the younger generation in another. Even in our states, no chief minister is less than 40. And if there is one, he/she is supervised by a strict father. The contrast becomes glaring when one finds that young leaders have occupied commanding heights in other walks of life - business, art, film and literature. A lack of opportunity and talent are responsible for this state of politics, but the former more often. Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi has had the opportunity for a long time to head the government, but lacks confidence to take charge. In another case, an 88-year old sees nothing wrong in becoming a minister. In this debate of old versus y

Letters: Age of infirmity?

Why Trai's cap on roaming charges has telcos seeing red

StatsGuru: 24-June-13

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

Indicus price monitor

Congress loyalist Girija Vyas' elevation to the Union Cabinet may not have been unexpected given that the party had to balance caste equations in her home state of Rajasthan ahead of the Assembly elections there. What took everyone by surprise, however, was the religious fanfare with which Vyas took charge of her assignment as minister for housing and urban poverty alleviation. On her first day at the office, the minister arrived with a battery of priests, flowers, garlands and other religious paraphernalia and conducted a puja before officially taking over. No doubt, the Congress is looking for some divine intervention ahead of the general elections next year. But last time we checked, India was a secular republic and its ministers were supposed to honour that, at least in the discharge of their public duty.

Divine intervention

There is indeed a link between growth and employment

Business Standard

Business Standard

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