This refers to Madhukar Sabnavis&rsquo; article &ldquo;Creative while being sensitive&rdquo; (February 1). The article is myopic in terms of taking advertisements as the medium of expressing the status of women. While breaking free with a chocolate on a cricket field when her boyfriend scored a century could send out the message that girls are not leaving the stage for boys and stretching their thoughts to action, advertisements could be far away from actually portraying how a woman is treated in general. There is no denying, however, that advertisement plots originate from day-to-day events. A recent statistic showed a rise in the number of women qualifying for IIM seats in the last few years. But that does not address the general viewpoint of the public, which has been expressed in crimes against women. We need to consider the plight of real families where women are still beaten up and treated badly.

Letters: Women and their depiction

Business Standard

This refers to the editorial â€œCharge of the think tanksâ€ (February 1). The entry of world-class think tanks in India far from being a â€œworrying developmentâ€ is a positive augury for the  development of the sector. The fear of â€œunequal competitionâ€ between foreign and Indian think tanks  is pure Luddite and needs to be scotched at its first sight. If Indian think tanks have earned their reputation of being septic tanks, the protectionist attitude is only to worsen the situation. Continuing the logic to its logical end, oppose entry of foreign educational institutions, foreign law firms, and so on. Should we then be prepared to remain content with the Hindu rate of growth? And why should we worry about competition, when the competition watchdog is in place?K D Singh  New DelhiLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002Fax: (011) 23720201E-

Letters: Think tanks vs septic tanks

Apropos T N Ninanâ€™s column â€œIndia as â€˜aidâ€™ giverâ€ (Weekend Ruminations, February 2), India needs to give and receive aid by following evidence-based approach. While India provides development assistance to other countries, it needs aid for itself, too. More than 30 per cent of Indiaâ€™s population live below the poverty line. Also, the human-development index in many rural and tribal areas of the country is not encouraging. Aid should be considered as an act of generosity than measuring it as big or small. India must welcome all kinds of development aid, especially those related with achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Governments and non-profit bodies contributing towards accomplishing MDGs deserve bilateral, multilateral and international assistance.Ajay Tripathy  VelloreLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002Fax: (011) 2372

Letters: Give and take

This refers to Martin Feldsteinâ€™s article â€œEnding Japanâ€™s long deflationâ€ (February 2). Uncontrolled deficits are the genesis of runaway debt. Japanâ€™s growth has been sluggish, averaging 0.8 per cent per annum. The nationâ€™s total tax revenue is at a 24-year low. Corporate tax receipts have fallen to a 50-year low. Its prime ministerâ€™s aggressive monetary policy to end two decades of deflation, in the form of an investment package of $120 billion, has been announced with the hope that it stimulates economic growth by two per cent and creates more than 600,000 jobs. But the bulk of this would merely go in renewing existing infrastructure. That only borrows time; the longer-term objective of the nationâ€™s economic rejuvenation remains largely unserved.R Narayanan  GhaziabadLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar MargNew Delhi 110 002Fax: (011) 23720201E-m

Letters: Rejuvenating Japan

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) should be hailed for its handling of the B S Yeddyurappa issue. The day the Karnataka chief minister was indicted by the state Lokayukta, he was removed from his post. This is in contrast to the Congress, which did not take any action against the Sheila Dikshit government, indicted by the Delhi Lokayukta and the Shunglu Committee, for the Commonwealth Games. In the recent Nitin Gadkari case, the BJP members again ensured the partyâ€™s morals stood high. Seen in this light, the BJP should reach a certain understanding with the Aam Aadmi Party and fight the ruling government from within and outside Parliament on all corruption-related issues.D M Rajan  Caranzalem, GoaLetters 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 numbe

Letters: Fight against corruption

New Delhi is too relaxed about China's Brahmaputra dams

Three more dams

This refers to Ajai Shuklaâ€™s column â€œNone so blind as those who will not seeâ€ (Broadsword, January 8). The article is one-sided and does not include any inputs from Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL), a Navratna defence public sector undertaking. There is no truth in the statement that the defence ministry is tailoring its future requirements of night-vision devices (NVDs) to what BEL can supply. Nor is BEL aware that the Army indicated a requirement of â€œthird-generationâ€ NVDs.Further, there seems to be a mix-up by the author, since the requirement of â€œFigure of Meritâ€ (FOM) 1400 has been spelt out by the Army in the approved GSQR (general staff qualitative requirement) for Night Sight for Carbine (quantity of 45,000 approximately, to which the author is referring).BEL is the only manufacturer in the country that has been manufacturing image-intensifier (II) tubes since 1991. Based on the requirements projected by the Army, BEL has planned to enhance cap

Letters: Following the Army's orders

Diesel dual pricing may hit Railways' turnaround strategy

Invest more in rail

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is known for subjecting her ministers to her beck and call and it is a measure of her power that even the most powerful of them readily comply with her summons. State Industries Minister Partha Chatterjee (pictured) was briefing journalists on an important meeting on Haldia Petrochemicals when Banerjee called him on the phone. The impact was immediate. Within seconds, Chatterjee started babbling to â€œmadamâ€ and then abruptly told reporters to leave. â€œMadam is calling and Mithun Chakrabarty has come to Writersâ€™ Buildings, so I have to rush now. We will talk in detail later.â€ No doubt the fate of a troubled joint venture that was once the stateâ€™s signature project was less pressing than the demands of an actor meeting the chief minister.

When 'Madam' calls

Bankers may remember D K Mittal, who retired as secretary of financial services last month, as the bureaucrat who bombarded them with advisories, but for officials in the finance ministry, he is the one person who gave the Department of Financial Services (DFS) a distinct identity. Bidding farewell to Mittal, one of the officials said everyone now knew what DFS was, unlike a few years ago when people simply called it the â€œbanking divisionâ€ and its secretary was referred to as the â€œbanking secretaryâ€.

DFS' unique identity

Recently, a Mumbai journalist travelling to Muscat drew $500 from a large public sector bank with branches in the Omani capital. Among the notes handed to her was a $100 bill from the 1996 series. In Muscat, no bank or exchange agreed to change that note for riyals â€” not even the currency exchange branch managed by the public sector bank that had sold her the dollars. The mystery, it turned out, was that in the international currency market, many fake dollar notes were printed in the 1996 series, so travellers who happen to get them find them notoriously difficult to change. The lesson, of course, is to check the forex you get so as to not end up with unacceptable notes, even if they come from a reputed government bank.

Notable fakes

Apropos T N Ninanâ€™s column â€œIndia as â€˜aidâ€™ giverâ€ (Weekend Ruminations, February 2), an estimate of the size of our total foreign aid is useful, since this information is not easily available. I would also like to make two related points: First, it is paradoxical that the external affairs ministry has been hobbled in creating its â€œDevelopment Partnership Agencyâ€; failing to get authorisation for additional staff, it had to re-allocate personnel from other units, which does not help with its chronic manpower shortage. Second, technical training is our trump ace. We can easily double our annual offering, to meet the standing demand and generate even greater impact.Kishan S Rana, New DelhiLetters can be mailed, faxed or e-mailed to:The Editor, Business StandardNehru House, 4 Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg New Delhi 110 002 Fax: (011) 23720201  Â·  E-mail: letters@bsmail.inAll letters must have a postal add

Letters: India's annual offering

It is seldom that someone delivers a speech on a serious subject like agriculture in the form of a poem. But Nadir Godrej, chairman of Godrej Agrovet, did exactly that at a conference on Indian food production. With rhyming couplets like: &ldquo;With Three Crops In Land, Goal Of Fast Growth Will Be At Hand&rdquo;, &ldquo;As Sugarcane Prices Moderate, Farmers Will Celebrate&rdquo; and &ldquo;A Duty On Edible Oil...

Rhyme time

A Hindi movie aficionado would be familiar with Wake up Sid, released in 2009. Now Bangalore has its own version of Wake up Sid, though not in movie form. This time, it&rsquo;s not Siddharth, the lead character in the film, but H Siddaiah, commissioner of the Greater Bangalore Municipal Corporation or the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike.

Waking up 'Sid'

The new minister for information and broadcasting (I&amp;B), Manish Tewari, has set up a high-level committee under prime ministerial advisor Sam Pitroda to examine the future of Prasar Bharati, the giant state-owned organisation that takes up almost two-thirds of the I&amp;B ministry&rsquo;s budget, and which controls Doordarshan television and All India Radio (AIR).

Doordarshan made anew

On Sunday, quietly and with the minimum of fuss, the process of land acquisition for Posco&rsquo;s steel project in Odisha began again, after a break of more than a year. It is far from clear what, if anything, this delay achieved, other than forcing investors to lose money, depriving locals of the cash that acquisition would bring them, and further souring India&rsquo;s steel output, employment and investment climate.

Need for more action

At a recent press conference for an award function, actor Shahrukh Khan asked the organisers for some time to address the media before the Q&amp;A could start. He then read out a statement he had written on an article he had authored for a magazine on being an Indian-Muslim. The three-page statement was in English and prompted regional TV channels to demand that he made one in Hindi. &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t translated it, but I will get it done and send it to your channels.

Gains in translation

This refers to the report &ldquo;FinMin: Cut FD rates for senior citizens&rdquo; (February 1). Ideally, such instructions with industrial and social implications should have been issued through the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) after due deliberations. North Block appears to be unaware of how interest rates evolved to the present stage. At the time of retirement in the early 1990s, retirement benefits deposited in banks or post offices gave a return of 12 per cent per annum.

Letters: Senior citizens and FDs

This refers to Mark Lynas&rsquo; Q&amp;A &ldquo;India&rsquo;s hunger problem shameful, indictive of entire system&rdquo; (January 23). His viewpoint that the Indian regulatory system was designed to appease activists showed his limited understanding of risks genetically modified (GM) crops carry. Recently, the European Food Safety Authority found toxic virus gene in the widely cultivated GM crops. That further strengthened the need for a strong regulatory body.

Letters: Risks involved in GM crops

Apropos your editorial &ldquo;Step forward for Lok Pal&rdquo; (February 1), lawmaking is the sole prerogative of politicians, and putting political parties out of the ambit of anti-corruption ombudsman shows their insincerity. Separating Lokayuktas from the Lok Pal has little significance for the aam aadmi.

Letters: Lok Pal without exceptions

This refers to the editorial &ldquo;What next for MGNREGA?&rdquo; (February 4). The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has almost reached saturation point, and has started giving diminishing returns. In order to sustain the scheme, it could be attached to industries or used to promote agriculture with innovative schemes &mdash; increasing production and profit.

Business Standard

Business Standard

Page 777 - Business Standard