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Social networking takes people to new highs, but it can also be the source of all-time lows if the Facebooker concerned is caught out in a scandal. This is what Trinamool Congress Member of Parliament Kunal Ghosh discovered. Ghosh is allegedly involved in the Saradha chit fund fiasco via his role as group CEO of the Saradha group's media outfits. Ghosh had to delete his Facebook page yesterday after it was inundated with opprobrium across the board. This page used to be his platform for promoting his party and party leader Mamata Banerjee.

Facing the music

There is an old saying: "Politics is the art of the impossible." This was amply demonstrated during a recent protest against the United Progressive Alliance government in Parliament over the coal and 2G telecom licence scams, when Samajwadi Party (SP) members of Parliament (MPs) were seen protesting alongside Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs, though both have strong and well-documented ideological differences. What amused onlookers most was an "Om" sign on a senior SP leader's shirt. With party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav recently commending BJP leader Lal Krishna Advani, some political pundits are watching developments with much curiosity.

Friendly enemies

Once bitten, twice shy. Faced with a recent defeat in the Supreme Court over the patentability of its anti-cancer medicine Glivec, Novartis Vice-Chairman and Managing Director Ranjit Shahani has become extra cautious. Addressing a media round table recently in New Delhi to discuss intellectual property rights-related issues, the otherwise candid Shahani ducked almost all questions on Glivec's patent. "After all this, I would not want to attract contempt of court!" he explained.

Patently discreet

This refers to the report "New procurement policy to boost India's self-reliance in arms" (April 20). The government's initiative to encourage domestic manufacturers to meet the country's defence needs is in the right direction. Even if manufacturing defence equipment within the country is more expensive than importing, the cost should not be a determining factor; security should be the top priority. At the same time, India's excessive dependence on imported communications technology needs attention. Sixty per cent of India's telecom hardware is imported from China. Huawei, China's largest telecom equipment maker, is under increasing scrutiny across the world for its close links with the Chinese government. A recent US report alleged that the company has close links to the Chinese military, linking it to an elite cyber-warfare unit with the People's Liberation Army. In fact, the company has announced that it would quit the US given its sales effort has been foiled owing to concerns ove

Letters: Achieving self-sufficiency

This refers to the article "Rot in the ad world" (Weekend, April 20). It exposes tellingly how advertising agencies use their much-acclaimed creative thinking in an unethical manner to exploit a poorly conceived evaluation system (to adjudge the best to hog excellence awards) so as to get more business from gullible clients. What is astonishing is that the clients depend on this patently questionable yardstick to put their money on advertising. Should they not discard the vicious nexus between non-disclosure of revenue of the agency and promotion of an evaluation system judged by the agencies themselves? By depending too much on award winners, are they not missing on highly creative agencies unable to cope with the networking, but gifted with high potential, and waiting for an opportunity to explode? It also raises the doubt in the minds of the end-users (or the buyers) of advertisements whether all that is claimed in the advertisement to create their attention, interest, desire and ac

Letters: Behind the creative gloss

The odd divergence of wholesale and consumer indices

Inflation vs inflation

Strange ways of promoting Abu Dhabi, at the cost of Delhi

A problematic hub

Cornered by allegations of corruption against senior ministers of the Karnataka government just ahead of the Assembly elections scheduled for May 5, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders have decided to use jingles and short films to tell their side of the story to voters. The BJP leaders have sought help from professionals to prepare four short films for television viewers and jingles for radio listeners. Apart from films and jingles, short video clips will also be shown to people through video projectors in residential colonies and markets.

BJP's multimedia defence

The Cobrapost sting operation revealing alleged money laundering by the country's top three private banks had elicited strong reactions from some bankers. Among them was Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Deputy Governor K C Chakrabarty who, initially, had emphatically denied that any transgressions had taken place. Now that the investigation report has been readied by the RBI, which talks about certain aberrations, he was recently asked if he stood by his earlier reaction; to which his sharp retort was, "It's not money laundering, it's your financial illiteracy."

On the money

A bureaucrat's lot is not always to be envied, if a talk by a senior mandarin from the department of consumer affairs is anything to go by. Addressing a group of representatives from the direct selling industry recently, he said bureaucrats often face a dilemma in discharging their duties between action and coercion. Dealing with consumer-related issues, he joked, is like the man who jumps into a well, ostensibly to save a child from drowning. When everyone applauds his bravery, he confesses to being pushed into the well, not willingly jumping in.

The push factor

This refers to the report "Cabinet clears Rs 12,000-cr special package for Bihar" (April 19). The central government's announcement of a special package for Bihar is more in the nature of weaning away the Janata Dal (United), or JD(U) from the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) to strengthen the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government than helping a state in need of financial support. Nitish Kumar's threat that his party would walk out of the NDA if Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi was named its prime ministerial candidate has induced the Congress to precipitate the NDA crisis and provide political asylum to the JD(U) under the umbrella of the UPA. However, Kumar has clearly said his party will not join the Congress-led UPA even if it pulls out from the NDA. But it must be admitted that nothing deters a party if and when it reneges on a promise made or a statement issued. Kumar can't help feel proud of securing the special package for the state.K V Seetharamaiah  HassanLetters

Letters: Special 'motive' package

This refers to the report "Mukesh Ambani gets 'Z' category security" (April 21). It can be best described as "Ambani proposes, the government disposes". The central government has decided to provide security to Ambani even as it virtually neglects the security of millions. Is it because his life is more precious for our politicians and bureaucrats? The government is always willing to genuflect before the power of money.V V Vijayan  MumbaiLetters 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

Letters: Ambani's security

In Kavitha Kuruganti's piece "How scientific are GM proponents?" (February 1), the author challenges the credibility of the scientific community regarding its knowledge of genetically modified (GM) crop biotechnology. She clearly betrays lack of even an elementary knowledge of new biology and modern-day research and development in creating novel products like GM crops. Kuruganti's mind is made up and she is not about to be confused by scientific facts and truths. The anti-GM lobby has completely politicised the GM crop issue in the country and specialised in a misinformation and disinformation campaign against GM crops with the public, politicians and some fringe political parties. Since the discovery of the structure and function of DNA by Watson and Crick in 1952, the staid world of descriptive biology has undergone a revolutionary transformation and scientists understand the basic mechanisms of a living organism at the molecular level. The field of modern biology is so advanced that

Letters: The value of new biology

Wholesale price index-based inflation in March at a 40-month low of 5.96%

Green shoots tracker

A unified agency is needed to tackle fraudulent deposit takers

Bengal's scourge

Opposition should learn from the 2G JPC fiasco

Debate, don't disrupt

It is now well known that Mamata Banerjee and her ministers publicly panic whenever a new controversy erupts in the state. Trinamool Congress General Secretary Mukul Roy, a close aide of the chief minister, acted true to form on Saturday over the Saradha chit fund crisis. Unable to coherently answer media questions on how the scheme got out of hand, an agitated Roy retorted that Times Now is a newspaper and it should not have published the advertisements of such chit fund companies, making dubious claims to double the amount of money deposited within a year's time. How a TV channel morphed into a newspaper that thousands of duped Saradha investors read is a mystery to everyone.

Out of focus

The department of economic affairs appears to have become a victim of the printer's devil. In an April 1 gazette notification updating the Harmonised Master List of Infrastructure sub-sectors, the fourth item under the subhead "social and commercial infrastructure" reads: "Common infrastructure for industrial parks, SEX, tourism facilities and agriculture markets".  Since X and Z are next to each other on the Qwerty keyboard, it is possible to deduce that the notification was referring to special economic zones, or SEZ. But the error is eye-catching and eyebrow-raising, considering it has appeared in an official gazette.

Devil in the detail

If you are among those wondering why India's most awarded creative agency Ogilvy & Mather didn't participate in the Goafest this year, here's one view doing the rounds. The agency has decided to use its annual "award budget" - the amount advertising agencies routinely set aside "to do what it takes" to win medals at various award shows - to create motivation packages for its employees, who are feeling battered and bruised by budget cuts by clients in the face of a protracted economic slowdown. If nothing else, you can thank the slowdown for keeping a check on made-for-awards advertising.

Slowdown gains

Apropos T N Ninan's column "The greatest! Who?" (Weekend Ruminations, April 20),  one of Margaret Thatcher's major "achievements" was her downgrading of tertiary education. That is ironic since she started out being education minister. Clement Attlee's  major initiative of actively supporting the Redbricks does not often find mention. If Sussex, Birmingham, Reading and even Warwick attained unprecedented fame in the 1960s and the early 1970s, it was because Attlee had set in motion policies to enhance support for them without infringing on their autonomy. In Thatcher's zeal to cut government spending, milk for schoolchildren was not the only casualty. The universities had the mortification of finding reduced government support, which affected the Redbricks far worse than the ancients. The out-migration of British academics, chiefly to the US, Canada and Australia, has been irreversible. I know many of them personally, and they are without exception still smarting from having to leave i

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