The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), Vinod Rai, retires on Wednesday and Shashi Kant Sharma takes over as the 12th CAG of independant India. Business Standard takes a look at the journey of the national auditor's office under various heads in the last 30 years.

Different faces of a 30-year journey

Business Standard

Estimated potential economic impact of tech across sized applications in 2025

A gallery of disruptive technologies

Apropos Kiran Mazumder Shaw's article "Ranbaxy a wake-up call for Indian pharma" (May 25), the penalty imposed by the US Food and Drug Administration on Ranbaxy for fraud and adulteration and its ban on products of Wokhardt's Aurangabad unit over quality concerns do not augur well for Indian generic drug makers. The government can no longer be a mute spectator. If companies are audaciously compromising on quality standards and/or resorting to adulteration while exporting to markets like the US, which follow strict regulation, then one is seriously concerned about the products that they offload in the domestic market. We need stricter regulator for the sector so that the public at large have access to quality drugs. The government should administer independent probes to find the guilty and serve exemplary punishment to people involved in corporate malpractices.V Sridhar, KolkataLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar Mar

Letters: Generic drug regulation

This refers to the report "Larsen &Toubro net profit declines 6.9% in the March quarter" (May 24). Despite being the largest engineering company operating in the infrastructure sector, with a strong balance sheet and excellent leadership and strategy, L&T is facing problems completing projects, leave aside the smaller companies in this sector that face many more problems. Bottlenecks, redtapism, delays in granting clearances and licences to infrastructure companies - all these can be controlled. But the government seems to be only interested in announcing the Plan ($1 trillion investment by 2017) for infrastructure development rather than actually doing what is required at the practical level. Until these problems are solved, no Plan allocation will be effective. Eventually, it will result in companies turning away permanently from infrastructure projects.Anand Wadadekar,  PuneLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Z

Letters: Infrastructure delays

Despite raising a whopping $16 billion, Facebook hasn't fared well since its market debut - as of May 17, Facebook shares were down 31 per cent compared to the IPO price. Two business-software companies - Marketo and Tableau - went public last week. There could be more, with strong rumblings of potential IPOs through the next year from consumer tech players such as Twitter, Square, Dropbox and Box

Renewed vigour

Overwhelmed by the performance of the Karnataka Janata Party (KJP) in the state Assembly elections, former Chief Minister and Lingayat leader B S Yeddyurappa is busy paying homage at temples. He had vowed to ensure the loss of his former party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and he has succeeded in doing so. However, prior  to the elections, senior BJP leaders warned Yeddyurappa that he the KJP would not cross 10 seats in the elections and his decision to form a new party would only ensure that the BJP didn't cross the 45-seat mark. However, Yeddyurappa managed to prove his point that he was the BJP's strongman in the state and the main Opposition party could not form government without him.

Power within

While Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit has launched the "Dildar Dilli" campaign to tell the world that the capital is not an unsafe city, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Raman Singh has launched the "Naya Raipur" campaign in the run-up to the state elections. Singh plans to equip Raipur with state-of-the-art amenities and services. He also recently gave away possession letters to the allottees of the 2,665 housing units, developed on 150 acres of land at a cost of Rs 365 crore by the Chhattisgarh Housing Board. "The city will now have wider roads named after Chhattisgarh's legendary figures who sacrificed their lives during the freedom struggle, and made exemplary contribution in the social and literary fields, making the state proud," said Singh.

Campaigning or marketing

Indian govts need to stop being arbitrary with TV channels

Takeovers, suspensions

There appears limited room for further gains

What next for bonds?

Sugar's still bitter

The "Sreesanth effect" is now visible on the remaining matches of the Indian Premier League (IPL) in the form of a well-developed towel phobia among cricketers. Those closely following live telecasts of subsequent matches would have noticed that bowlers have eschewed the once popular practice of wiping sweat from a towel tucked into the waistband in favour of the wristband. The question is: when will the bookies who have escaped detection in this round-up choose wristband-wiping as a favourite spot-fixing signal?

IPL's towel phobia

Meanwhile, the IPL spot-fixing scandal has created a competition of sorts between cops of different cities as arrests and seizures spread across the country. The Delhi police went to Mumbai, the Mumbai police went to Chennai and so on. Delhi police officials are miffed that cops from other cities are trying to take credit for their big break. Asked if the forces of different cities were competing, an irritated senior cop shot back, "We are the capital's police. Why should we compete with smaller cities? If we compete at all, we will compete with some of the better forces." The "better forces" to which he was referring are from around the world.

Indian Police League

Tirupur's exporters, buffeted by strictures against environmental damage and child labour laws in the international media, appear to be ultra-keen to establish their ethical credentials. As a result, factories in the area can now be spotted with large signs on their gates declaring "No child labour" - sometimes these signs are larger than those bearing the name of the company to which the factory belongs. The message is clear: with the exports business already in the dumps, ethical controversies are out of the question.

Sign of the times

This refers to the report "Quadricycles get govt green signal" (May 23). The solution to a practical, affordable and sustainable public transportation alternative in our crowded roads does not lie either with the existing auto-rickshaws or the introduction of quadricycles. The increase in the number of small vehicles (both public and private) every year has made traffic movements in our cities painfully slow. Despite this, our transport system is becoming increasingly skewed towards personalised vehicles, whereas investment in the bus transport system has not increased in line with the requirement of the growing number of users, resulting in prolonged waiting time and overcrowding. Here, it would be pertinent to mention that to reduce gridlocks, many cities in China, such as Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing, have a vehicle control policy in place (such as auction of vehicle licence plates) that makes owning a car expensive. However, to have such a policy, our cities need to have, like t

Letters: Indian cities in a gridlock

Apropos Samar Jha's article "How deep is the malaise in the Indian Railways?" (May 21), the Railways' structure is better than any other in sight and does not really need changes. It has a strong cell for managing the cadre of around 11,000 officers, headed by the Railway Board's secretary, an officer of general manager (GM) rank. All confidential reports, selections, postings and career planning are managed here, with the involvement of the Railway Board, but only up to the formation of a selected panel for GMs. With the use of a rigorous point count system for yearly performance, and the Railway Board's oversight, there have been few lapses. I was secretary for six years; the tough selection process leads to only exceptional merit appearing in the GM panel, and postings by seniority are more than adequate. Unfortunately, postings of GMs/Board members are handled by the Railway Board's chairman with a tiny cell of one confidential assistant, even bypassing the Board. Since the current

Letters: Rail management

Sebi has hinted at pushing through key regulations around the time of its 25th anniversary celebration this week.  Some of the important legislation that it has been working on cover issues relating to insider trading, FIIs, depositories and SME listings. The regulator has also come out with five consultative papers on some of these proposed changes. A snapshot of the status of each:

Inform, consult, impose

Dropping the cost

Li Keqiang said the right things, but India should be cautious

Positive strokes

What is the role of the Competition Commission of India (CCI), a successor of sorts to the once sprawling Licence Raj-era Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission? While delivering the commission's annual day lecture on Monday, Finance Minister P Chidambaram warned the competition watchdog against becoming "another bureaucracy, stifling growth" and it to continue to be a "lean" organisation. Later, asked to respond to Chidambaram's comments, Chairman Ashok Chawla quipped: "He advised us to be lean but not mean."

CCI means business

Followers of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in Bihar are doing their best to increase the popularity of the senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) member. In fact, Animal Husbandry Minister in the Bihar government, Giriraj Singh, is distributing music CDs consisting of eight songs praising Modi. The songs are sung by Haryana-based singer Rocky Mittal. At a time when relations between the BJP and Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar cannot be called favourable, the distribution of CDs praising Modi are unlikely to be taken lightly by the Janata Dal (United) leadership.

Modi-fied songs

Union Minister of State for Communications and Information Technology Milind Deora is active on Twitter with some 72,000 followers. His handle describes him as a musician and a dog's best friend, besides his official designations. While his tweets are generally about his daily meetings and an attempt to advertise his government's achievements, today he posted a picture of a half-cut Alphonso with the tag: "The future's bright - the future's orange", probably referring to the colour of the mouth-watering fruit rather than the saffron opposition party. Within minutes, he was back to plugging his government: "In 9 years, false controversies aside, #UPA has achieved a great deal for participatory democracy. E.g. RTI has empowered India's voiceless". The future may be orange, but is it bright?

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