The disease becomes endemic, revealing health system's flaws

Swine flu strikes again

Business Standard

This refers to the editorial â€œSwine flu strikes again: The disease becomes endemic, revealing health systemâ€™s flawsâ€ (February 20). The word influenza is derived from the word â€œinfluenceâ€. The swine flu virus is rapidly making its way around the world but has been relatively mild as of now. The risk is that flu viruses can mutate quickly into something more lethal. Vaccination for swine flu was used in the early seventies in the US but was withdrawn owing to neurological complications. Many infectious diseases have an animal origin. What starts as a disease in animals transfers to human beings with the potential to spread as a pandemic. The worst global pandemic in modern times was the one in 1918-19. It affected about a third of the human race, and is estimated to have killed 50 million people. Animal-origin flu has been described â€œan unchanging disease owing to changing virusâ€.In a study conducted by the Institute of Zoology in Britain and the Hanoi School o

Letters: Preventing swine flu

Steps to prevent exports collapse should help avoid a crisis

Worsening current account

Stanford University has set a new record for college fund-raising, becoming the first school to collect more than $1 billion in a single year, according to the Council for Aid to Educationâ€™s annual college fund-raising survey.

Stanford on top

Global market research agency Nielsen has just released a list of top-10 rankings for brands in six lifestyle categories based on consumer surveys done in eight cities of the country. The categories include mobile apps, handsets and operators, e-tailing websites, books and travel destinations. The findings are for January and will be updated every month both city-wise and on an all-India level. A look at the top brands on the consumer wish list.(All-India rankings)

Nation's most-likeable brands

TELECOMKey developments| Finalisation of reserve price for auction and latest round of auction scheduled in March 2013| Lukewarm response in the spectrum auction conducted in November 2012| Lower spend on new subscriber acquisition and stabilising tariff

Budget 2013-14: Wishlist

Centre must not see objections to food Bill as hurdles

Forward on food

Citi has emerged as the top investment bank for share-sales conducted through the offer for sale (OFS) route since January 2012 till date. The US-based bank has handled seven share-sales to raise about Rs 6,800 crore. Citi has managed several big-ticket OFS transactions, including ONGC, NTPC, NMDC and Oil India. Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BofA-ML), which has raised a total of Rs 4,254 through five share-sales, is at the second place. BofA-ML has benefited from transactions such as Adani Enterprises and Adani Power, where it was the sole investment bank.Launched last year, primarily to help companies achieve 25 per cent public shareholding, the OFS route has emerged as the preferred route among India Inc to pare promoter holdings. Since 2012, about 27 share-sales have taken place through this route to raise nearly Rs 40,000 crore.

Top i-banks for offer for sale

A differential tax structure for derivatives is not fair but CTT will act as a dampener for investors and cut commodity trade volumes

Time for commodities transaction tax?

Strike actually reveals the failure of Indian trade unionsThe two-day general strike called by 11 all-India trade unions in protest against the ruling United Progressive Allianceâ€™s economic policies will disrupt normal life, certainly, but not as much as the trade unions may like. In some ways, that fact reflects both the successes and the failures of liberalisation. For the unions and the political parties that are supporting them â€“ primarily the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party and the parties of the Left Front â€“ the bandh call is a straightforward response to policies that they see as having led to inflation, and a warning against further reform like disinvestment and more foreign direct investment. It seems to have become a feature of Indian politics that protest even by well-established political parties against the chosen policies of a legitimate government requires the entire gamut of inconvenience, intimidation, destruction of property and outright vio

Worst of both worlds

Vinod Rai, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) whose controversial reports on telecom licensing and coal block allocations proved a deep embarrassment to the United Progress Alliance government, appears to have few illusions about his role. At a function in Mumbai recently, somebody in the audience asked him about the perception that the government had made the wrong choice in appointing him the CAG. He couldnâ€™t comment on that, he said, but added half-humorously, â€œI can assure you they will make a right choice in choosing a successor!â€

A question of choice

The ministry of information and broadcastingâ€™s proposal to open a new social media wing has raised many questions. The wing, which is expected to be the governmentâ€™s answer to platforms like Twitter and Facebook, will be headed by a senior official. But seasoned media watchers said the establishment of a new wing defied logic since the government already had the Press Information Bureau, which was mandated to do exactly the same job of publicising, disseminating and spreading information about the government and its working.

PIBbed to the post?

The dominance of the Nehru-Gandhi family in Indian politics may have been underlined with Rahul Gandhiâ€™s elevation to the vice-presidentship of the Congress recently. But his familyâ€™s dominance of public life in general can be gauged from the numbers of schemes, projects, awards and universities named after Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. According to one estimate doing the rounds, there are 12 Central government schemes named after one or the other of these three former prime ministers, 52 schemes from the states, 28 sports tournaments and trophies, 19 stadiums, five ports and airports, a humungous 98 universities and educational institutes, 52 awards, 15 fellowships, 15 national parks, sanctuaries and museums, 39 hospitals and medical institutions, and 74 roads, buildings and places (though this last could be an underestimate).

All in the family

Apropos M J Antonyâ€™s column â€œWhen wheels of justice clogâ€ (Out of Court, February 13), the author has pitchforked one of the most costly and preventable causes of delay in the dispensation of court cases â€” frequent adjournments. According to one study, the average duration of a court case in India is 15 years, and much more in the case of civil suits. It is not that there is a dearth of legal provisions and Supreme Court guidelines to stop this much abused system. The code of civil procedure (after its amendment, with effect from July 1, 2002) permits a maximum of three adjournments to a party during the hearing of the suit. In Sheela Barse vs Union of India, the court reaffirmed speedy trial to be a fundamental right. Quite often, an adjournment serves the interest of lawyers better than the cause of justice. Representing many clients simultaneously, and the system of charging fees per hearing rather than per case, provide the basis for the postponement of the case. Nor

Letters: A costly and avoidable tool

LAST WEEK WE ASKED:  Do you think it will be a good idea to offer an annual package of Rs 55 lakh to foreign faculty with Indian origin for science institutes? Would this leave Indian faculty happy?

Student's corner

This refers to Premvir Dasâ€™ article â€œThe Chinese are coming?â€ (February 15). The news of Chinaâ€™s renewed interest in the development of Gwadar port in Pakistan has recently emerged. India has already missed the chance of involving itself in the development of Hambantota port in Sri Lanka to China. A few days ago, a newspaper report said Myanmar was actively planning to build a mini-Singapore near Kyaukpyu, a small town 25 km off the island of Ramree on its west coast. This will give Myanmar an effective link to the Indian Ocean and southeast Asia. It is only 100 km off the oil and gas fields in the Bay of Bengal. China has already poured several billions of dollars into various projects in Myanmar and is well set to grab this project, too. It has almost achieved an effective link through Myanmar to Kunming in southwest China through highways and railways. As far as India is concerned, our ministersâ€™ pronouncements on the Look East Policy has not yielded any substantial inform

Letters: China's global impact

RETAILKey developmentsOn 20 September, 2012, the government issued a notification that will go a long way in developing India as an important market for single-brand retail players. Trading rules have bee

J Hari Narayan, chairman of the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (Irda), is demitting office on Wednesday. Business Standard looks at some of the highs and lows of his five-year tenure as the head of the insurance regulator.

The man who brought changes

The euphoria surrounding the launch of the new equity exchangeâ€”MCX-SX â€” has subsided as data shows market participants have stuck to the established bourses to execute their trades. The average daily trading turnover for MCX-SX in the first seven trading sessions was just Rs 33 lakh. A comparison with the first seven days of NSE's trading shows it too had a humble beginning with average daily turnover of Rs 7 crore. BSE, which was an established bourse during that period, had an average daily turnover of Rs 187 crore during 1994-95. Market watchers believe MCX-SX faces an uphill task, going ahead, of catching up with its counterparts. A lot will depend on whether the new incentive scheme announced by MCX-SX lures brokers and investors towards it platform.

On your mark, get set...

Tripura Chief Minister Manik Sarkar has become almost legendary for his frugal lifestyle and, in the run-up to the state elections, his income and wealth disclosures only served to underline that point. The chief minister does not have any fixed deposits to his name and owns an ancestral house in his village. He also declared a bank balance of Rs 10,000. At the last state elections five years ago, his bank balance was Rs 16,000. That makes Sarkar perhaps the only politician in the country whose bank balance has, in fact, declined while in power.

Balance of power

The Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) rarely miss the chance to take potshots at each otherâ€™s achievements. In a recent informal meeting with reporters, a senior Congress leader suggested that senior BJP leader L K Advaniâ€™s book My Country, My Life should have been titled My Life, My Lies because it has innumerable factual errors on political developments in and outside the country.

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