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

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

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

Those in the news

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

A snapshot of PE activity & deals in 2012

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?

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.

Business Standard

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