What explains the Indian political system&rsquo;s stunning inability to come out and clearly defend women&rsquo;s right to leave their home, navigate safe public places and go to work? A series of recent statements on women&rsquo;s rights from politicians and leaders, especially from those who owe their allegiance to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, deserved a firm counterpoint &mdash; both from those within the Sangh&rsquo;s affiliate, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), who believe in economic growth and modernisation, and from those members of the political class with no ties to the Sangh. A senior minister in the BJP&rsquo;s government in Madhya Pradesh, Kailash Vijayvargiya, declared that there was a &ldquo;Lakshman rekha&rdquo;, a line that women should not cross or else they would be subject to abduction, as Sita was in the Ramayana.

Women at work

Business Standard

This refers to the editorial &ldquo;Women at work&rdquo; (January 8). In stooping so low as to shift the blame for the unspeakable violence on the gang-rape victim, Asaram Bapu has betrayed his mental derangement and spiritual bankruptcy. Reading between the lines, we discern that the self-proclaimed spiritual guru makes an attempt to put the perpetrators of the crime on a pedestal. The pity is that men with misogynistic attitudes are masquerading as spiritual gurus and misleading the people about gender roles and relations. It&rsquo;s time they are exposed for what they are, and are socially boycotted.

Letters: Retrogressive ideas

When it comes to regional connectivity, the government of India appears to err on the side of unwarranted generosity to private airlines. Its recent decision to scrap rules that make it mandatory for airlines to deploy 10 per cent of their capacity on unviable routes like Jammu &amp; Kashmir, the northeast and the Andaman &amp; Nicobar Islands and subsidise those that agree to do so flies in the face of logic. The generosity does not stop here. The government also plans to approach state governments in such regions to lower sales tax on aviation turbine fuel (ATF) to attract private carriers to their airports. It is hard to understand the logic of either policy. First, although it is true that airlines incur losses on these routes, they can by no means be suffering losses solely on account of them. That&rsquo;s because they cover these losses through cross-subsidies in regular passenger fares on other, viable routes.

Flying in the face of logic

There are many reasons companies choose to change their names but a senior bureaucrat in Gujarat discovered a truly unique reason. The case in point is the waste management outfit Narmada Clean Tech Ltd, of which the bureaucrat is a board member. Initially called Bharuch Eco Aqua Infrastructure Ltd, its chief demanded a new name. Why? It turned out that for some time, treated effluent from the outfit would be disposed of in a natural creek called Amlakhadi leading to the Narmada estuary. Thanks to the effluent, the local people began to call it the &ldquo;gandaa (dirty) canal&rdquo;, and as a result, the officer in charge was called &ldquo;gandaa canal saab&rdquo;. Since nobody would want such an appellation, the officer was keen that the company got a new identity.

A dirty picture

Economic growth data could be a matter of perception, and its beauty or otherwise clearly lies in the eyes of the beholder. Speaking recently in New Delhi, Nobel laureate Amartya Sen recalled taking a call from a French newspaper after the euro zone recorded zero growth in June. &ldquo;They wanted to interview me because &lsquo;it&rsquo;s a great thing that growth in the euro zone has stopped declining&rsquo;,&rdquo; he said. After two hours, he got a call from an Indian news channel asking for an interview on the &ldquo;dismal&rdquo; gross domestic product data for the April-June quarter.

Dismal sciences

Inequality is certainly a serious problem in India but Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh seems keen to ensure equality in every aspect of public life. At a recent event in the capital, he was asked to moderate a panel discussion. When the floor was opened for questions, he took the stage and declared that he would ensure that &ldquo;demographic, professional and racial equity&rdquo; was maintained even during question hour.

A question of equity

This refers to the report &ldquo;Give preference to non-corporate sector for new banking licences: Rangarajan&rdquo; (January 7). Earlier this week, Nobel-laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz expressed his discomfort at the idea of allowing corporate houses to own banks, saying it amounted to a conflict of interest. The corporate sector missed the bus earlier when the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) opened the financial sector to new-generation banks on the same ground that an industrial house cannot own a bank. Now, RBI prefers non-banking financial companies (NBFCs) and industrial houses to enter the sector. The fear of conflict of interest is exaggerated. It is wrong to assume that the corporate sector will necessarily misuse the banking channel. Even if the bank is not owned by an industrial house, it can have access to bank funds.

Letters: Give corporations a chance

Although many non-banking financial institutions and financial institutions are today strong private banks, it is time the Reserve Bank of India opened the banking sector to corporations as well. The need of the hour is not the number of banks &mdash; but their size. Apart from India, all other BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) countries have one or more banks in the world&rsquo;s top 50 list. The central bank should issue licences to corporations that show potential. The risk of default is also lessened owing to the fact that real estate broking firms and stock brokers cannot apply. Moreover, there is a cap on foreign investment.

Letters: . . . and reduce default risk

This refers to your editorial &ldquo;Solving the gold riddle&rdquo; (January 4). Why does no one highlight the persistently high level of inflation that the ruling United Progressive Alliance has unleashed upon us as another kind of tax on the people who save. Bring inflation close to one or two per cent, and see who buys gold to beat inflation.

Letters: Inflation-gold equations

If spiritual leader Asaram Bapu suggests she should have begged her rapists for mercy, Madhya Pradesh Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya warns her ilk not to cross the 'Laxman Rekha'. RSS supremo Mohan Bhagwat says such rapes happen only in India (read urban) and not in Bharat (rural), while the President's son, Abhijeet Mukherjee, smirks at the &quot;highly dented-painted&quot; women protesters at India Gate.

Are these men simply callous about the Delhi rape victim's plight or do they have a point?

An improvement in economic and corporate earnings growth in Asia in 2013 has created a favourable backdrop for equities, especially when valuations are inexpensive and investors are conservative, said Goldman Sachs. In its report, the investment bank said the watchwords for 2013 are &lsquo;growth recovery&rsquo; as the US has reached a fiscal compromise and China&rsquo;s growth and policy outlook has firmed.

Nifty to touch 7,000 by Dec'13: Goldman Sachs

This refers to Shyamal Majumdar&rsquo;s column &ldquo;Who will teach the teachers?&rdquo; (Human Factor, January 4). The poor quality of teachers is indeed a cause for serious concern. One possible solution that is being worked on at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay is the use of the internet to provide education. On its part, the government is trying to provide every child with a low-cost tablet computer. If interesting and good quality educational material can be developed and deployed on the internet, an equal opportunity for receiving quality education would be available to all children.

Letters: Shift to online learning

December turned out to be a mixed bag for the country&rsquo;s car makers, throwing up confusing signals. Maruti Suzuki, the country&rsquo;s largest car maker, reported a six per cent rise in domestic sales during the month over December 2011. Mahindra &amp; Mahindra&rsquo;s sales were up 18 per cent. On the other hand, Hyundai, the second-largest car maker, saw sales drop almost 10 per cent. Tata Motors was down a staggering 51 per cent.

Waiting for the RBI?

An Indian corporate giant is now pushing its own credit cards to customers visiting their retail outlets. That&rsquo;s not news but the way they&rsquo;re going about it is intriguing. The credit card sales personnel are strategically placed (most often at the billing counter). They approach a customer with an innocuous question: &ldquo;Do you own a credit card?&rdquo;. If the customer says yes, hoping to shake them off, they will then hard-sell their card, suggesting you use it because it has more benefits. The real benefit is for the company: Gaining a customer who already owns a card makes it easier for the company to secure the details required for fulfiling know-your-customer norms as mandated by the banking regulator.

Piggyback selling

The top brass of State Bank of India (SBI) is working hard to sell auto loans to customers, even cutting processing fees &mdash; but the message, it seems, is not percolating down the organisation. Take, for example, the experience of a resident in Kharghar, Mumbai. He went to his nearest SBI branch for a car loan and was asked to go to the branch near his office in Taloja. After the harried customer went to the Taloja branch, he was asked to go back to Kharghar. When the customer went back to the Kharghar branch, he was then asked to go to the branch nearest to his company&rsquo;s headquarters, which was in another city. Clearly, SBI&rsquo;s ad campaign and all the efforts by the leadership are being wasted. The customer finally went to a private bank for the loan, even though it meant paying higher interest.

Car seva by SBI

Mumbai real estate prices never cease to surprise the city&rsquo;s residents, but they still retain the power to shock occasionally. Recently, one builder bought land from a slum dweller in central Mumbai at Rs 1 crore a room. The sweeper who owned it had been living in the slum for the past 40 years and has now resigned his job and returned to his village. No wonder Mumbai is called the city of gold.

Slumdog crorepati

This refers to the report &ldquo;Infra biggies queue up for largest PPP project&rdquo; (January 4). This is a huge step by the state towards making Mumbai an international financial centre. It will mean comfortable and quicker travel for the people &mdash; and a significant increase in labour productivity. Last week, The Economist observed that Mumbai&rsquo;s &ldquo;millions endure commutes that would qualify them for post-traumatic-stress counselling in rich countries, and that rush-hour trains get so crushed that a phone or pair of glasses carried in a breast pocket will smash under the pressure of bodies&rdquo;. Let us hope that the best of the state, railways and business resources are deployed in this project. The government should periodically inform the people about its progress &mdash; the period for which the private partner will receive the revenue, the approximate one-way fare, and so on.

Letters: India's maximum city

The editorial &ldquo;India&rsquo;s two futures&rdquo; (January 1) attempts to rationalise the behaviour of the six accused in the Delhi gang-rape case, and draw economic policy implications. No amount of deprivation &ndash; be it a broken family, unemployment or lack of security &ndash; can justify the brutality of their act. The write-up talks about the problem of unemployment suffered by the juvenile (one of the offenders) for many years. Such an attempt to theorise the crime tantamounts to trivialising studies of social sciences. There is also an urgent imperative to lower the upper age limit for juveniles from the present 18 years. This limit made sense in the yesteryears with dramatically different socio-economic milieu.

Letters: Rationalising crime

This refers to the editorial &ldquo;Time to reform wheat&rdquo; (January 3). For producers, the Union Cabinet&rsquo;s decision to raise the minimum support price (MSP) of wheat by merely Rs 65 per quintal is an act of mockery. In 2008-09, wheat MSP was increased from Rs 850 to Rs 1,000 (17.7 per cent) and from Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,100 (10.2 per cent) in 2009-10. The Centre&rsquo;s export target of 2.5 million tonnes may be achievable, given the Food Corporation of India&rsquo;s buffer stock of wheat is three times more than required. This may be the reason for the Centre&rsquo;s indifference to the needs of the farming community. The government is, indirectly, discouraging farming of wheat and rice, especially in the northern states. With the increasing agricultural produce cost, how will the farming community benefit by such a small rise in wheat MSP? The government should balance the cost borne by producers and prices paid by consumers.

Letters: Minimum support

India begins the new year with an increasingly weak external account. As Table 1 shows, the current account deficit has steadily weakened since the pre-crisis year of 2007 &mdash; in fact, in the latest figures, it has dipped below 5 per cent of gross domestic product. As Table 2 demonstrates, this is thanks to a weakening balance of trade. Meanwhile, foreign exchange reserves, as Table 3 lays out, have not increased to match India&rsquo;s greater vulnerability.

StatsGuru: 7-January-2013

This refers to Kanika Datta&rsquo;s interview with author Zareer Masani &ldquo;Macaulay&rsquo;s &lsquo;child&rsquo;&rdquo; (Dinner with BS, January 1). The article covers some interesting issues. Masani&rsquo;s observation that &ldquo;English teaching is terrible&rdquo; in India is right. The progress of a language in a foreign country depends on the pedagogy used in teaching, public usage, clarity-richness of the language in nuancing subtle differences in meaning with precision and its capacity for inventing new words to meet contemporary needs. While Wren&rsquo;s grammar is still being taught in schools as also when I went school in the forties, emphasis has shifted from rigidity to convenience of usage. Earlier, the rule required use of apostrophe to show the possessive case of an animate noun only; so to call &ldquo;Tom&rsquo;s shirt&rdquo; was correct but &ldquo;shirt&rsquo;s colour&rdquo; was not. Not nowadays.

Business Standard

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