A senior government nominee director on the boards of Raju companies after the Satyam-Maytas scam in 2009 recalled how he suggested recording proceedings of board on tape

A scam and a tape recorder

Business Standard

With the country facing humongous skill shortages, out-of-the-box solutions to ramp up skills like the one suggested are urgently needed. The theoretical portion of the course can be delivered by selected engineering colleges to students who are 10th pass through post, internet and evening or early morning classes.

Student's corner

This refers to the editorial &ldquo;India&rsquo;s two futures&rdquo; (January 1). The write-up does great disservice to the tragedy of the girl&rsquo;s death and the pain of her family by ascribing the absence of gainful employment as a reason the men in the bus committed the horrific crime. This is classic moral relativism. Countless rapes have occurred in Delhi inside privately owned vehicles with tainted windows. These were supposedly owned by well-to-do people far too distant from casualisation but not lumpenisation.

Letters: Class-less crime

Paper-less organisations have been the trend in corporate India for some time but the government&rsquo;s Press Information Bureau has woken up to this cost-saving practice only now. The agency has instructed all its departments to stop issuing hard copies of press releases. That will save it tonnes of paper, but it has, amusingly, left older hands in journalism grumbling.

Savings on paper

Senior officials of the income tax (I-T) department of Karnataka were in a spot at a press conference they held on the last day of the year. A query from a journalist left them searching for answers. As part of the plan for outsourcing some of the government&rsquo;s non-core work, many departments now hire vehicles for senior staff instead of buying them. Accordingly, the I-T department uses commercial taxis with yellow number plates to ferry many of its senior officials. But many officials insist on using beacons atop their hired cars, even though such cars are not permitted to do so. Asked about this, officials tried to duck the question, saying officials from &ldquo;this office&rdquo; did not transgress the rules. &ldquo;It is officials from the other office in Bangalore who do so and they visit this office every now and then. No one from this office does it,&rdquo; they insisted.

Beacons of change

At the end of December, there was no dearth of organisations or associations still celebrating Ganeshotsav or Rajyotsava (Karnataka&rsquo;s formation day) in Bangalore. Ganeshotsav was on September 19 and Rajyotsava fell on November 1 in 2012. The reason for organisers being so temporally-challenged was the availability of orchestras. With few orchestra troupes to go around, their calendars are packed. So the organisations celebrate the festivals on the dates the orchestras are free.

Orchestrated delay

For two hours after midnight on January 1, 2013, the United States headed off the dreaded &ldquo;fiscal cliff&rdquo;. Then the US Senate voted to pass a package that averts the worst of the disaster for now. If cleared by the House of Representatives on Wednesday, the immediate prospect of harsh spending cuts that would almost certainly lead to a fresh recession will be avoided.

Kicking it down the road

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released data on India&rsquo;s balance of payments during the second quarter of 2012-13 on Monday that made for sobering reading of challenges as India heads into the new calendar year. The challenges ahead are severe. The headline number: 5.4 per cent.

A year of weakness

The US Senate agreed (89-8) early on Tuesday to a slew of measures aimed at minimising the effects of the fiscal cliff. Even as the deal missed the deadline, it left out measures on the debt ceiling. Now, the House of Representatives is set to take it up. It can accept or reject it in its current form or amend the Bill and return it across the rotunda to the Senate.

A cliffhanging turn?

A look at the people who've made news for all the right (or wrong) reasons last year.

Those in the news

This refers to Tony Joseph&rsquo;s article &ldquo;The middle class needs a party&rdquo; (December 31). An issue that the writer does not touch on but that should be taken up by the middle class is the continuous price rise in India. The middle class becoming &ldquo;rational, logical and tactical&rdquo; is good news. It is aware of its rights, and the approach is not only pragmatic but refreshingly different. If it takes up the inflation issue, the poor would also join them &mdash; battered down by food inflation. To begin with, it can draw out a programme on the lines of &ldquo;Occupy London Stock Exchange/New York Stock Exchange&rdquo;. It can focus on Mint Road and the finance ministry.

Letters: Rise against inflation

This refers to the editorial &ldquo;A long-overdue raise&rdquo; (January 3). You have rightly advocated an immediate increase in diesel prices. But in the light of the current political situation, that would be a huge step. However, even a small step like levying an additional duty on diesel-driven cars and sports utility vehicles is not being taken by the Central government. Both the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the opposition parties, particularly the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have shown scant regard for implementing a long-term policy on commodity taxation and fixing prices of petroleum products. Since crude price is beyond the government&rsquo;s control, the only logical step is to put in place a rational policy on taxation of all petroleum products. The BJP leaders have conveniently left it to the UPA to toy with different approaches &mdash; most of which are haphazard.

Letters: Is a diesel price hike viable?

This refers to the report &ldquo;Company law roadblock hits tax-free bonds&rdquo; (December 27). The article fears that big corporate houses are wary of investing huge sums in tax-free bonds offered by various (state-owned) infrastructure companies owing to the possible breach of provisions of Section 372A of the Companies Act, 1956. However, there is some misapprehension in interpreting the provisions of the Section as far as the applicability of the minimum benchmark limit for lending rates is concerned. Sub-section (1) of Section 372A deals with three kinds of investments that may possibly be made by a company: (a) giving loans; (b) giving guarantee or providing security; and (c) investing by way of subscription, purchase or otherwise in securities. Currently, subscription to tax-free infrastructure bonds cannot be regarded as a &ldquo;loan&rdquo; granted by a company, nor as a guarantee or security provided. It would, unarguably, be an investment by the company in securities.

Letters: Misplaced argument

After taking almost two years for the Nifty to touch the psychological mark of 6,000 again, the question traders are asking is, will the index hold above this level? Technical analysts say it can if the Nifty holds above 5,850-5,900. The stocks that could lead the rally, if any, in the coming months, could be last year&rsquo;s laggards

2013-the year of The Tortoises?

The cheer of the new year was darkened by news that India&rsquo;s public finances continue to be in dire straits. The deficit of government spending over revenue has already reached over 80 per cent of budgeted levels. The clear indication is that the Budget target of a fiscal deficit at 5.1 per cent of gross domestic product, or the finance minister&rsquo;s &ldquo;revised&rdquo; target presented in the fiscal consolidation road map a few months ago, of 5.3 per cent of GDP, is out of reach.

A long-overdue raise

The Union Cabinet&rsquo;s decision to raise the minimum support price (MSP) of wheat by five per cent for the current rabi season defies logic in several respects. For one, the effective increase of Rs 65 per quintal conforms neither to the recommendation of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP), which wanted the MSP to be frozen at last year&rsquo;s level, nor to the agriculture ministry&rsquo;s suggestion, which favoured a step-up of Rs 100 a quintal. The announcement&rsquo;s timing, too, is questionable &mdash; the bulk of the wheat crop has already been planted. With the policy of open-ended grain procurement being unchanged, the government is likely to once again end up mopping up the bulk of the market arrivals of wheat in the post-harvest peak marketing season, needlessly swelling its grain reserves, starving the open market of adequate supplies and pushing up wheat prices despite surplus production and record inventories.

Time to reform wheat

For Chhattisgarh&rsquo;s Tourism Minister Brijmohan Agrawal, the new year got off to an unpropitious start. The minister planned to ring in 2013 in elaborate style with relatives and close friends in Mainpat &mdash; an idyllic hill station known as the Shimla of Chhattisgarh. As the minister and his entourage left for Mainpat, he came in for a scathing attack from state opposition parties. Most of the state&rsquo;s political leaders had opted to cancel new year&rsquo;s celebrations to mourn the death of the Delhi gang-rape victim, so his rather insensitive decision to celebrate became the source of much anger. Although Agrawal was left with no option but to cancel his year-end revelries and return to Raipur, the minister&rsquo;s media in-charge couldn&rsquo;t resist turning the event into a publicity stunt. He released a series of photographs showing Agrawal returning to Raipur by train.

Backtracked publicity

Inaugurations and keynote addresses can be a way of settling scores, senior corporate lawyer O P Vaish told an audience at a conference on the new companies Bill at which he was doing both. He recalled an incident when he as an organiser settled scores with a minister. The minister was fine with inaugurating the event but not very comfortable about making a speech. Vaish had assured him that there would be a prepared speech, he just had to read it. Recalling the incident, Vaish said, &ldquo;The first two pages of the speech talked about the environment, how it was in bad shape and so on. At the end of the second page, there was a line saying &lsquo;I want to highlight six points that we need to do to make this better&rsquo;. When the minister turned the page, it was blank. The minister looked at me. &lsquo;You are on your own, sir,&rsquo; I told him. Now, you guys have put me in a similar situation,&rdquo; the octogenarian told his laughing audience.

Blank fire

Apropos Devangshu Datta&rsquo;s column &ldquo;Generation gap #fail&rdquo; (Viewpoint, December 29), the ruling political establishment has failed to fathom and respond to the changing mindset, expectations and aspirations of the young and educated generation &mdash; judged by the way it handled the upsurge of protests against the brutal rape of a young woman in New Delhi. However, it is debatable for two reasons, whether this failure has raised &ldquo;considerably&rdquo; the chances of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) to be voted out. The profile of the youth described by the writer is confined to the educated urban class who has easy access to electronic and social media. But nearly 70 per cent of Indian voters live in villages whose exposure to these influencing means of communication is limited by lack of education and opportunity.

Letters: Rural hopes and votes

Apropos Asish K Bhattacharyya&rsquo;s column &ldquo;Is multiplicity of audit bad?&rdquo; (Accountancy, December 24), common sense dictates that in a heavily legislated and regulated economy such as India, a case should be made for less rather than more audit. While statutory (or public) audits and internal audits are equally prevalent in the western economies, there is no corresponding precedent for cost (or management) audits. Statutory audits have a history of over 50 years in India, while internal audits have been gaining significance over the last decade &mdash; not only because companies over a certain size are required by the Companies Act, 1956 to carry out such audits, but also company managements and audit committees are increasingly convinced that internal audits are an integral part of better internal controls and of effective corporate governance. A similar justification does not exist for cost audits.

Letters: More or less audits?

The real estate sector attracted the most investments, accounting for 19.3% of the total investments in terms of deal value with an aggregate of $1.64 billion. Software &amp; services, with the highest numbers of deals (162), was the second, attracting $1.53 billion (18%). Health care equipment &amp; services attracted $834.9 million across 34 deals.

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