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This refers to the column &ldquo;Students as customers&rdquo; (Worm&rsquo;s eye view, December 29). Such situations arise when any educational institution is run by a person who has nothing to do with education, except to treat it as a cash cow. In the last decade, this has been the trend in several business schools in India. Small-time entrepreneurs &ndash; who earned profits in different ventures like real estate, sale of automobiles, sweet shops, insurance broking, and so on &ndash; have entered the education sector by opening business schools. They are likely to treat students as customers. On the other hand, in government-funded institutions or institutions supported by genuine educational trusts, teachers are guided by a strong belief that students are products of the institution and need moulding, and hence, do not consider them as customers. This is also true for premier business schools.

Letters: The 'business' of education

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 Ravi Boothalingam&rsquo;s article &ldquo;Looking beyond 1962&rdquo; (December 28). His prescription for increased trade relations with China needs to be pursued earnestly. However, views can differ on the two areas he mentions &mdash; high speed trains and modernisation of our railway stations with Chinese foreign direct investment.

Letters: Infra dig?

State Bank of India: Key beneficiary of any pick up in GDP growth and reduction in lending rates. Stress on asset quality at near-peak levels. Pick up in loan to deposit ratio in Q4FY13 and re-pricing of residual bulk deposits would support NIM. Strong liability franchise marked by high CASA would support NIMs in the long term. Valuations are still lower than five-year average.

What research houses bet on in 2013

Good year
India ended 2012 with its best gains in three years(Click on graphic)

2012: Rings out on a high

The Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) programme will only debut across 20 districts nationwide, for merely seven schemes.

Big plan, small start

Nobody knows the name of the 23-year-old student who died on Saturday after she was brutally raped nearly two weeks ago by six men in a white bus with tinted windows that moved unchecked through South Delhi. But aspects of her biography have been reported. Put together, they build a picture that provides a stark and revealing contrast to what is known about those accused of the crime. In a way, as India enters another year with its growth potential intact but ever further from being turned into reality, the contrast between the young woman and her attackers also shows the two paths that India can take from here on. And, importantly, the choice between those two paths isn&rsquo;t purely a matter of politics or of social reform &mdash; it&rsquo;s a matter of making the right economic choices.

India's two futures

It&rsquo;s yesterday once more at business school campuses: summer job placements this year seemed like final placements four or five years ago. At the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta, for example, as many as 75 firms out of a total 230 didn&rsquo;t get the chance to make offers as the process ended ahead of schedule. The summer placement report card suggests 2013 may be a much better year than 2012 for jobs &mdash; IIM Lucknow placed 453 students in a record five days and IIM Calcutta&rsquo;s 449 students secured job offers in four days. Even the newbie, IIM Rohtak, saw 53 companies participating with the highest stipend crossing Rs 1 lakh. Beyond IIM, the 240 students of XLRI Jamshedpur got over 280 offers in four days, while at Mumbai-based Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies, many companies returned to the campus after a year&rsquo;s gap.

Green shoots for jobs

More than six decades after India gained Independence, Rashtrapati Bhawan has broken a tradition that continued well after the British left the country. President Pranab Mukherjee has opened the tennis lawns of the former vice-regal residence for children of Class-IV employees. Till now, only officers and their families were allowed to use the sports facility. To begin with, the President&rsquo;s office has selected five children who will be given formal training in the game and will be able to use the facility along with the officer cadres.

'Inclusive' tennis

Chhattisgarh became the first state in India to pass a food security law, well before the Centre had even got its act together despite many announcements. When officials asked Chief Minister Raman Singh the reason he was hurrying through with this law, he said, &ldquo;I told them that what others think, we in Chhattisgarh implement,&rdquo; Singh said. The chief minister has also ensured that food security is not abolished even if he is not in power. For that, he tabled the Bill in the Assembly and got it passed into law too.

Chhattisgarh, leading light...

Narendra Modi might have been elected chief minister of Gujarat for the third consecutive term &ndash; and is quite euphoric about it &ndash; but a senior Congress leader said there was nothing spectacular about Modi&rsquo;s achievement. The Congress has not one but three chief ministers who have won three consecutive terms in office &mdash; Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dixit, Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi and Manipur Chief Minister Ibobi Singh. How far the three are comparable to Modi&rsquo;s third term is for political pundits to ponder.

Thrice-born CMs

This refers to Tony Joseph&rsquo;s article &ldquo;The middle class needs a party&rdquo; (December 31). The author presents certain economic parameters to argue that things haven&rsquo;t been any worse to justify the kind of mass uprising that we are seeing in recent months. He goes further to say they are actually better. However, it is quite possible that the under-the-surface dissatisfaction with governance as a whole has now reached the critical masses, thanks to the dramatic expansion in the reach of the various powerful media. It is a wake-up call to political parties that business as usual will not do anymore.

Letters: A wake-up call

A little over five years ago, India&rsquo;s moribund and sometimes distant relations with Japan got a dramatic boost when that country&rsquo;s visiting prime minister, Shinzo Abe, told India&rsquo;s Parliament that he looked forward to a &ldquo;confluence of the two seas&rdquo; (the Indian and Pacific oceans), and a &ldquo;broader Asia&rdquo; that would create &ldquo;an arc of freedom and prosperity&rdquo;. Mr Abe declared that Japan had &ldquo;rediscovered India as a partner that shares the same values and interests&rdquo;. His strategic vision included Australia and the United States, with which India and Japan launched what was called a &ldquo;Quadrilateral initiative&rdquo; that included joint military exercises. The exclusion of China from this &ldquo;concert of powers&rdquo; was self-evident, and Beijing protested strongly against the birth of what it called an &ldquo;Asian Nato&rdquo;.

The significance of Mr Abe

The last StatsGuru of 2012 examines how the stock markets have done this year. Which shares were big gainers and which big losers? As Tables 1 and 2 show, many of the gainers were in cement and infrastructure, showing even that moderately-performing sectors can have standout players. Many of the losers in Table 1 suffered from lack of confidence in their promoters, perhaps because of share pledging.

StatsGuru: 31-December-2012

This refers to the editorial &ldquo;An illustrious career&rdquo; ( December 28). The house of Tatas is different from any other conglomerate in India, and both J R D Tata and Ratan Tata have ably demonstrated the reason. Let us accept that in any country, and particularly in India, doing business &ndash; and that too in many of our states with different political parties in power &ndash; is a tough proposition. Ratan Tata may have taken some time to prove his capabilities but he succeeded in establishing himself as an outstanding chairman. Indian cars like Indica and Nano must be considered emblems of national pride, even while accepting that the Tata cars are not perfect. In this connection, let us not forget consumer activist Ralph Nader&rsquo;s well-known comment (&ldquo;unsafe at any price&rdquo;) about American cars. It is difficult to predict the future of the Tata empire under its new chairman Cyrus Mistry.

Letters: Adieu, Ratan Tata

The brutality of the gruesome gang rape of a young woman in New Delhi has appalled the public and provoked an overdue debate. It is hard to comprehend how any man could derive physical pleasure by forcing himself upon a woman against her will. Rape is not a normal sexual act; it is a heinous and despicable crime involving humiliation and enforced submission of a woman. It is a manifestation of sadomasochism and a negation of humanity. In any case, the urgent need now is to make public places safe for women.

Letters: An overdue debate

This refers to the report &ldquo;No need for CAG audit of CBM blocks, says Rangarajan panel&rdquo; (December 27). Without even entering into the merit of the Comptroller and Auditor General audit, it is not in the jurisdiction of Economic Advisory Council (EAC) Chairman C Rangarajan to comment either way on the need for audit in any particular case.

Letters: Rangarajan's role

People trying to get &ldquo;legally married&rdquo; may have to wait a little longer, thanks to Aadhaar. The unique identification number is now mandatory for legally registering a marriage. Recently, married couples who wanted proof of their wedding to travel abroad (a marriage certificate is mandatory in some countries, especially Europe, for a honeymoon couple) are finding themselves in a fix. Those who applied for marriage registrations this month were told to come again in the new year with an Aadhaar card.

Tied in knots by Aadhaar

Railway ministers are known to dole out largesse to their home states and constituencies but new incumbent Pawan Kumar Bansal from the Congress party appears to have interpreted his role within the rubric of coalition politics. The ministry under Bansal has overturned an unwritten rule set by his predecessors of giving preference to berths reserved on recommendations of members of Parliament (called the EQ quota) only and strictly for their close relatives and family members. Now, sources in the ministry say, the EQ quota has been opened to all and any recommendation by an MP, irrespective of whether the passenger is relative or friend of the MP or otherwise.

Railway minister's EQ

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi might not have spelt out his prime ministerial ambitions in clear terms but that has not stopped his supporters and officials from pitching him for the role. The cover of the glossy illustrated pamphlet containing the text of Modi&rsquo;s speech to the National Development Council (NDC) meeting last week had a saffron patch running across the bottom of the page with a piping of the tricolour along the top of it. One of the officials on Modi&rsquo;s team commented that the tricolour would slowly expand and cover the entire saffron patch below. The reference might have been very cursory but the real meaning was not.

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