This refers to Barun Roy's column "Still an area of darkness" (Asia File, June 13). Despite several outbursts of public anger in the past 66 years, India has had periodic elections, and even changed governments. Our democratic strength is what distinguishes us from China, which, despite much progress, is not able to find a mechanism to give its people minimum rights and freedom, much as its leaders declare from time to time. In their recent book China's Silent Army, Cardenal and Araujo say this ability of India is burning China up inside. In both the "India Shining" and "Bharat Nirman" campaigns, the accent is on development.  This is a positive sign; and we should not bemoan it.S Subramanyan, Navi MumbaiLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002Fax: (011) 23720201  Â·  E-mail: letters@bsmail.inAll letters must have a postal address and telephone number

Letters: India, a democratic success

Business Standard

This refers to A Seshan's letter "KSK: Gentleman-economist" (June 11). I was working with State Bank of Mysore, Dalal Street branch, Mumbai in 1976-79 when K S Krishnaswamy was the RBI deputy governor. His salary account was with our bank. I was asked to reconcile our accounts with the RBI that was in arrears for more than a year. During the course of verification, I found that we had not responded to credits received on the deputy governor's salary account. When I checked his savings bank account, I found that the salary amount had been credited by debiting his salary account under the expenditure head of our bank. In a couple of months, the salary had been paid again by responding to credits given by the RBI. The balance, however, had not been drawn, but we needed his consent to reverse the credits. That was the only occasion when I went to his office, seeking a letter. I expected to wait outside as I was a very junior officer. But the deputy governor called me in, and while handing

Letters: Remembering KSK

Growth, inflation and external stability are caught in gridlock

Murky macroeconomy

Coal probe shows business in politics needs to be tackled

Interests in conflict

For working professionals, switching jobs and industry is common, and over 50 per cent of them switched industry after the first job, finds Jobs & Industry Switch Survey-2013.

Change is constant

LAST WEEK WE ASKED: Do you think joining a B-school is the best bet during a downturn?

Student's corner

Apropos the editorial "Rushing it through" (June 5), the food security Bill still needs to address many important concerns, and do away with some of its conceptual flaws:First, the Bill does not specify who will fall under the 25 per cent category, which will not qualify for subsidised food grains;Second, why does the government want to incur cost of transportation of wheat, which is said to be double the amount of cost of procurement, when families who need subsidised food grains in villages can be provided for in the villages itself?Third, why is the government heavily dependant on the Food Corporation of India for storage and safety of food grains, and does not invite owners of godowns or warehouses to store wheat or rice on rent?Fourth, farmers (with agricultural land holdings up to one hectare) may lose interest in producing wheat because they will be given wheat at Rs 2 per kg per member per month from the government.Fifth, why is the government dependant on members of the Nation

Letters: A flawed food security Bill

The depreciation of the rupee has not been a sudden development. There were indications of a weaker rupee in April, and the decline was steady from the first week of May, with overnight value-at-risk averaging around 30 basis points. Those who neglected hedging their foreign currency liabilities are bound to suffer. The steep depreciation of the rupee is mainly on account of a stronger dollar, exacerbated by domestic conditions such as widening trade deficit and lower gross domestic product growth. Any intervention by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) would at best curb speculation and provide only temporary reprieve. The rupee is being driven into a vicious circle, resulting in higher import costs, rise in inflation and lower foreign institutional investor inflows - all of which feed on further weakness of the rupee. Any hope of another rate cut has already receded.RBI Governor D Subbarao has rightly expressed his helplessness, given the central bank has not been targeting that a specif

Letters: Rupee slide, no surprise

For business journalists, a corporate acquisition is always an exciting news development. That excitement appeared to have infected ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), which ended up jumping the gun. Talks have been on for some time for OVL to acquire Videocon's stake in the Rovuma Area 1 offshore oil block in Mozambique. On Monday, the company's corporate communication department issued a press release announcing a $2.5 billion buyout. Within an hour, a counter press release appeared, requesting media organisations to withdraw the original release, adding it had been issued "inadvertently". And just in case the message hadn't got through, another release was sent around midnight, imploring them to remove all references on their websites and other media. The official story from the corporate communication department is that the mix-up was the result of one person's error, but since OVL is a government-owned company, no one's really buying that line.

OVL off message

Unrest in Turkey's Taksim Square and earlier Egypt's Tahrir Square may have dissuaded increasingly outward-bound Indian tourists from planning holidays headed that way, but one country that is hoping to gain from this is the tiny kingdom of Jordan. As the crisis on Taksim Square intensifies, the Jordanian tourist authority has swung into action, issuing a press release on Tuesday encouraging Indian tourists to visit. In an oblique reference to the political disturbances around the nation, the press release says, "Decades of political stability, security and law enforcement have made it one of the top 10 countries worldwide in terms of safety and security." Jordan has also emphasised that it is no way affected by the strife in the region around it. True, but the problem is that most tourists usually take in Jordan as part of a longer visit to Egypt or Turkey, so its peaceful status doesn't count for much in that sense.

Jordan talks Turkey

Last month, well before the headline-grabbing Goa meeting of the Bharatiya Janata Party that catapulted him centre stage, Narendra Modi addressed the Indian Merchants' Chamber in Mumbai. He was in form. He told the 7,000-strong audience crammed into an auditorium meant for 2,000 that he had requested the prime minister to start a Mumbai-Ahmedabad Metro and also build a Statue of Unity to commemorate Sardar Patel, who had united India. The statue, he said, must be double the height of the Statue of Liberty in the US. Somebody from the audience said people wanted to see Modi in Delhi (as prime minister). He did not demur, merely replying that his priority was to reach Ahmedabad before nightfall...

Tall order?

The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) for April is expected to be released on Wednesday. India's industrial production grew 2.5 per cent in March, after a sluggish growth of 0.6 per cent in February. A Business Standard survey of economists shows that growth is expected to be 2-2.5 per cent in April and would pick up only in the next quarter

IIP growth to remain moderate in April: Economists

Clearances will be key to new towns on Delhi-Mumbai corridor

Urbanise, smartly

Is government serious about FDI in retail or not?

Micromanaging the chain

News of the death of K S Krishnaswamy, the former deputy governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), took my mind back to April 9, 1956 when I joined the central bank's Department of Research and Statistics as an economic assistant. I was posted to be KSK's assistant, who was then a deputy director in the division of rural economics. I had already heard of his accomplishments. He was considered the author of the First Five-Year Plan document. At the Planning Commission, he laid the foundation for future planning efforts in association with the Director of Perspective Planning, Pitambar Pant. It was at a time when the database for the Indian economy was weak with statistics on its different vital aspects missing. He joined the RBI as a research officer, but there were persistent attempts by the Planning Commission to take him back. KSK had already established his reputation as an outstanding economist and, to retain him, RBI Governor Rama Rao decided to promote him as a deputy director

Letters: KSK: Gentleman-economist

Apropos Asish K Bhattacharyya's article "Corporate governance failure at Ranbaxy?" (June 10), it is apparent that the former bureaucrats and corporate honchos who adorned the Ranbaxy board in 2004 had miserably failed in their duties by missing out on the ample distress signals provided by resignations in quick succession by top R&D staff. Here again, the wily CEO must have carefully kept the fact well covered or treated it as an insignificant development. Had Thakur not blown the whistle when he was safe in the US, far away from the arms of Indian law, this sad episode in the Indian corporate history would never have come to light.R C Acharya, New DelhiLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002Fax: (011) 23720201  Â·  E-mail: letters@bsmail.inAll letters must have a postal address and telephone number

Letters: Ranbaxy's unwary board

The last day of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP's) National Executive witnessed much confusion when Leader of the Opposition in Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj was missing from the public meeting organised by the party's Goa unit. Despite the media being told by the BJP leaders that she would be attending the meeting and that her name was included in the invitation, she was not present. It was only much later that the leaders realised that Swaraj's flight ticket to Delhi was already booked and her name had been wrongly included.

Missing in action

Even as many argue that auditors have failed to check the growing incidence of corporate frauds in the country, the accounting body, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), is determined to defend its role and purpose. At a recent press conference, ICAI President, Subodh Kumar Agrawal, quoted an old saying with a twist: "Jahan Na Pahunche Ravi, Wahan Pahunche Kavi. Aur Jahan Na Pahunche Kavi, Wahan Pahunche Chartered Accountant" (A poet's imagination reaches even where the sun cannot reach. But a chartered accountant's reach surpasses even the poet's reach).

Poetic audit

After Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa's walkout at last year's all-state chief ministers' meet, on grounds of not being given a fair hearing, the Centre bent over backwards to prevent a repeat during her state's annual plan discussion with the Planning Commission in Delhi. Officials say not only was Yojana Bhavan entirely secured by her own state police before she arrived, the chief minister ensured that even Delhi-based media was debarred from entering the building. This lockdown is unprecedented; till last year, chief ministers interacted freely with journalists during their annual visits to the Commission. With elections round the corner, however, politicians are increasingly inclined to avoid the media. Jayalalithaa would have been particularly anxious to do so since there would inevitably have been questions regarding her party's pre-poll alliances following the developments in the Bharatiya Janata Party's camp.

Out of bounds

NEW DATASOUTHWEST MONSOONGAINS MOMENTUMThe monsoon was active in north interior and coastal Karnataka, Telangana and Kerala and its intensity is expected to increase further. The monsoon has also arrived in Mumbai, some parts of Maharashtra, Telangana and coastal Andhra Pradesh.

Green shoots tracker

Address the current account deficit with concrete steps

Business Standard

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